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0:00Good morning. Welcome back. So, any questions from yesterday? Uh any questions or comments? Uh yes.
Uh hey. Uh I had this weird dream last night.
Okay. Uh so so in the dream like we were discussing you you were like doing compare and contrast uh between Final Fantasy 7 and the other like stories and all all of a sudden I was I was set on a journey to look for a answer right and and like like intuitively uh sorry like I know I I I I feel like there's a tree and and I I I knew like the tree probably has the answer that I'm looking for.
M
um and I found the tree, right? But between me and the tree, there's like a huge lake or like a gigantic water
like between me and the tree.
Yeah.
And there's no way for me to reach the tree, right?
Yeah.
And so I'm standing there like gazing the tree. I'm like I'm I'm trying to figure out like figure out a way to to to get to the tree and and then like as I as I'm ging the tree and I realize the the reflection of the tree is like a it's like more vivid than the tree itself on the reflection of the tree on the water, right? And as as if the reflection of the tree is it's talking to me and then I heard this voice uh and he and he said uh stop looking outward start looking inward and I'm always with you
2:00and then w then I opened my eyes and woke up and the first thought that came to my mind is as above so below
and I'm still thinking about it. Yeah. So, I just want to share this.
Yeah. That's beautiful dream. And actually, it's very interesting. First of all, how vivid the dream is, how you're able to remember it so clearly and vividly. That's pretty rare with dreams.
Second of all, what's really interesting is like when Dante ascends purgatory higher, he's going to have a vision similar to your vision. Yes. Where they're going to go meet a tree and the tree is going to talk to them. And um it's very interesting why this happens. Does anyone want to try to interpret his dream?
Try to try to think like why this is happening. He see he sees a tree and he thinks this tree is his goal, but there's a river that blocks access to the tree. So instead he sees a reflection and this reflection talks to him. Okay, that's a very vivid dream and this is something that actually Dante, it's a vision that Dante would have and we'll see a vision very similar to this in as we climb up Mount Purgatory. So, what is this dream about?
Uh, yes.
I'll just do a simple interpretation from lines that I remember that we read. I remember there was a line where it said that the seed was more than the plant that grows in the end.
Yes. And so maybe it's a reference that it has to grow within you and you can't seek out the finished plant. And then another line was that um God's will is on the other side of a river that no human can damn. So maybe it's like the flow of time, the flow of change, and that you're so tempted to look on the other side of the bank, but really you just have to stay on your side and try and think about it for yourself.
Yeah. Yeah. That's great interpretation. So um in purgatory uh Dante uses the metaphor plant a lot. Okay.
And usually
4:00refers to family. So when he says plant and seed it means just because you're born as family does not does not actually uh confine your fate. You're still independent of this family. Okay. The seed and the plant are not the same thing.
Okay. But he he uses the um metaphor plant a lot to describe uh family and also plant of course also refers to the tree of knowledge. And so the idea is we shouldn't be condemned to original sin, right? Just because of what Adam and Eve did. Okay.
So, so plant is a very important uh metaphor. Plan and tree are very important metaphors in uh purgatory. Any other thoughts or interpretations? Okay. So, as you read the divine comedy, the um the interpretation will become a lot more clear.
Okay. All right. So, I want to begin today's class by talking about uh Yes. Yes.
I have a question about the logistics of purgatory.
Yes.
And um we have people moving up, but let's use Pakarda as an example. So Parda moved through purgatory and then ended up in her spot.
Um so Picarda actually went straight to heaven. Yeah. She didn't actually go through purgatory because she she live she lived a sinless life, right? She was without sin. She was was about blame.
So because I was under the impression that maybe Elijah and Ilah who um I'm getting they went straight to heaven.
They went straight to heaven. Yes. But everybody else even everybody else is has some sort of sin and so they went through purgatory but okay. So Pard is a bad example, but anybody else um who's going to extend through purgatory, are they going to snap instant end up in their part of Paradisio that they expect or I I didn't get any idea that we moved through Paradisio also?
That's that's that that's a great question. Okay, so the idea is there's certain individuals who go straight to heaven, right? These include Mary, um
6:01Rachel, Ruth, um Beatatrice and so the um but in paradise there is a hierarchy as well and the hierarchy um is really your proximity to God and this is determined by your understanding, your faith, your willingness to be by God. Okay. Okay. So the people who are closest to God of course are people who se who are seated in uh the red rose. Um and so the question then is okay let's think of this.
If you ascend through purgatory um what determines your place in heaven? Well, well, it would be the same criteria, right? Because purgatory, it's meant to purge you of your sins. But once you're purged of your sins, then what remains is your understanding of God, your faith in God, and your willingness to be to be in God. and Picarda, she did she did lead a sinless life, but it was one about um real faith, right?
So, it was kind of passive and that that that showed a limited understanding of God that showed limited faith that that showed limited um willingness to be God. So she did she like she got she got to Yale so she did all everything required checked all the boxes but she's basically like the worst student at Yale because she's not willing to take the hardest classes you know uh she you know she's not really pushing herself to her limit. Okay. Does that make sense? Okay.
All right. All right. So let's talk about the schematics of um the divine comedy. So we know from paradise because we had paradise first
8:03that um ultimately the end goal of the universe is for us to co-create with God. How? Through faith uh hope and love. And what we also discussed is that faith it's really about imagination. Right?
You have to imagine that God exists. You have to imagine that God is all loving, all generous, all merciful. You have to imagine that you have a special divine mission on earth. Okay, this is all things that you cannot prove. You just have to imagine them.
You have to believe them. Okay, that's the idea of faith. Then hope is one of arrogance which is to say like I matter. What what I do on this earth matters and and I could be a nobody right? It doesn't matter.
I still have responsibility to uh love those around me to seek justice uh to be generous with others. Okay. Okay. So, think of Rachel who didn't really do much, but because um because when presented with a choice, right, Leah had already married uh Jacob, she still chose to love Jacob and marry him and like endure the pain of being with her sister for the rest of her life. Okay.
So, that's the idea of hope. And then love is one of action. Okay. If you truly love someone, then you will pray for this person for all eternity. Okay.
So, that's that's the green grand um thesis that Donnie is presenting. A a truly good life that that draws you closer to God is one of faith, hope, and love. And this counters the traditional understanding of what these terms meant historically as presented by Paul and Augustine, right? Um faith is one of compliance. Don't question things, just believe things.
Hope is one of humility.
10:06You are saved by the grace of God. There's nothing you can do to change your fate. Just just be humble before God and then you will ascend to heaven. And love is really one of obedience to obey the church to to be a sheep and let the church be the shepherd. Okay.
So again this framework um um subverts the traditional church teachings. When we went to inferno what we appreciated is that the nine circles of hell are designed in a way as to promote these ideas on earth and to punish those who subvert this these ideas. Okay. So as you remember the the nine circles are limbo um lust um gluttony, greed and anger. Okay.
So these five are outside the capital of hell this. So they're not that serious. Okay. And then within this um there's heresy, violence, fraud, and then treachery. Okay?
And these are the nine. And again, it makes sense because um these four disrupt others capacity to practice faith, love, and hope. Okay? So right now we completely understand what's going on. When we get to purgatory, there are problems.
Okay? Because there are seven terraces now. And these seven terrorists are um uh pride, envy, sloth, um greed, um is it uh wrath, uh lust, and then there's gluttony.
12:08Okay. Actually, you know what? I I I I think I think I screwed this up. I I I think I I I I Anyway, um it doesn't matter. Okay.
All right. So, what we also discuss is that um there are certain punishments that just would replicate themselves in hell. Okay. So, for example, there's no there's no circle of envy, but the punishment is to be blindfolded to to be blind. Basically, your eyes are shut and you have to hold on to other people in order to get around.
Okay? and you have to depend on other people to get around. And this um is punishment for trying to for envying other people. Okay? Because before you saw yourself as separate from other people, now you're completely dependent on other people.
Okay? Um and in hell it' be the same thing. But what we said is like the results would be different because in uh purgatory because they're depend because they're trying to seek redemption. They're trying to push themselves of their envy. They're actually working together, okay?
And they're looking inward to be a better person. Whereas in hell, if this were the same situation, then they would not work together. They push each other around and they would all imagine that each is better than than than the rest. And because you're blind, they can't see that they're actually the same. They would go they would go crazy.
Okay? They would be very angry. So the question for us is how would this system further this system? Okay, do you understand? There's a totality, there's a unity, a coherence to this Dante cosmology.
I'm trying to figure out the logic of this. I understand why you'd be punished for disrupting this the system, but how would this actually help us get to this? Okay. All right. So, um so before I do that, I just wanted to u basically summarize what the punishment.
Okay. So, for pride
14:08um uh you have to learn humility, right? So, what happens is like you are like stones are put on top of you and you have to like crawl. Okay. Okay. So, you're always um humbled.
Okay. Uh for sloth, you you're you are forced to run around a lot. Okay. You're you're active. You're running around run a lot.
Um for greed, you're crawling. Okay. Why you're crawling? Because before on earth, you were so greedy, you wanted power, right? So, you're always ascending.
But as punishment, now you are crawling. Uh with wrath, what happens is you're blinded by smoke. And the idea is that your anger blinds you, right? And so you have to learn to see with your heart. Um gluttony is you basically starve.
You're starving. Uh lust is that you're burning you're you're you're burned by a flame. Okay. So uh this is the structure of purgatory and I want to figure out why it's like this. How would constructing a system like this purgatory help advance the larger goal of ensuring that everyone lives a life of faith um hope and love?
Any suggestions? Okay. So, first of all, is it easy to get into purgatory? Yeah, it's pretty easy. Okay.
There are lots of ways you you get into purgator purgatory. Okay. So, one is to repent at the last minute, right? You can live a a life of total sin, but the very last minute you're like, I seek God. Okay?
That's one way. Another way is if you do an act of charity, an act of goodness in your life once. Okay, that goes against
16:09the church which is like if you do an act of sin once, you're screwed. But here it's like no, you do an act of good once and then you're saved. Um your family members could pray for you, right? Um there are lots of ways to get into into purgatory. So one me so one um really interesting thing about purgatory side it's easy to get into it's easy to get into hard to advance.
Okay, does that make sense? Like anyone can go to purgatory but to graduate you have to like work really hard and it could take you a million years. Okay, that's the first characteristic about purgatory. Okay. The second is what else about what's another distinct characteristic about about purgatory that's important for us to appreciate.
Uh yes,
that if people pray for you then you serve like long uh less time.
Exactly. Okay. People's prayers matter. Okay. So you have to figure out who prays for you, right?
And we we discussed yesterday I might have like 10 million fans. They're gonna pray for me for all eternity when I die. Okay? So, I better treat my kids and my parents and my neighbors, my friends well because they might pray for me but not my fans. Okay.
U so that's really important to appreciate. Uh did you have a
that you can't look back otherwise it'll go right back to the beginning.
Yes. Okay. You have to have conviction and devotion. Okay. Yes.
The moment you go in, you have to commit yourself to complete cleansing yourself. The moment you doubt, you're out. You're out of there. Okay. Uh yes.
No, I was going to say the same thing.
Okay. All right. Okay. So again, there are some some uh any other curistic about purgatory. Yes.
Uh just a question cuz you said uh if you don't have the conviction, you get out of there. But I thought in one of the last classes you said everyone who
18:09gets into purgatory will get out. No, no, no, no. I said if you get into into purgatory, you can now have the opportunity to go to heaven, right? But that doesn't mean you go automatically to heaven because it's hard to graduate, right? Excuse me.
But eventually, but as long as you maintain your conviction, right? The moment you're like, you know, I I don't want to do this anymore, then you're kicked out. Okay. All right. Any more interesting characteristic about purgatory?
Yes.
It requires cycles of self-reflection and inward look. So the traveling by day only, ascending by light.
Yes, that's right. That's right. The self-reflection is very important. Is there a hierarchy to purgatory? There's a hierarchy to hell and heaven, right?
There's a hierarchy to purgatory. There's really isn't a hierarchy, right? Do you understand? There's really no isn't saying like, oh, this like the higher you go, the worse the sin or or like the least the sin. Okay?
It's all equal. So, what happens is rather than doing all seven terraces, you just do one terrace, you fulfill your you purge your sin and then you go straight to heaven. Okay? So you just assign to one um terrace and then that's that's good enough. Okay.
So there's it's just basically uh uh no hierarchy. Okay. All right. So so explain to me why purgatory is constructed the way it is. And again we need to remember there's a unity a totality to divine harmony.
And so all three have to line up perfectly, right? So, we've been to paradise. We know what paradise is about. We've been to hell. We know what we know what hell is about.
Explain what what purgatory is about.
20:10Yes. Well, one thing it does, it um inverses the sins of inferno or hell because lust is uh at the very first in inferno, but it's at the very top in purgatory.
Yeah, it's really weird this way, right? There there's an inversion going on, right? Yeah. No, the show is very clever this way where in um inferno the the the four sins, lust, gluttony, greed, anger, they're inverted in in purgatory. Why Why would he do that?
Yes. up the layer of the purgatory, you're closer to heaven, so the sin is not as severe as the ones at the bottom layers. That's that's interesting. Okay, that's an interesting idea, huh? But I don't understand why.
Oh, yeah, you're right, actually. Yeah, this this does make sense. Yes. Right. Okay.
So, there there is a hierarchy. Yeah, I'm wrong. Okay. Yeah, because you're close to heaven and this you're and then this is like further from heaven. You're right.
No, no, no, no. You're right. Okay. Yes, there is a hierarchy like the higher you go, the less serious the uh the sin. Yes.
Uh yes.
And it's very interesting that the punishment is kind of the same except it's the attitude of the partaker. So then it's all about attitude and it's all matching.
Right. Right. So I'm trying to figure out but why? Okay. We're trying to figure out the logic of this structure.
Okay. So, whenever we encounter a situation where we're trying to figure figure something out, okay, what we always want to do is figure out the
22:10counterfactual. You understand? Okay. So, let's do the counterfactual. Let's just say um we don't do it this way and we just do it the way the Catholic Church wants to do it, right?
Okay, this is purgatory. Someone explain to me what is being taught about purgatory at this point in history. Okay. Um, yes.
That you'll be punished until you repent and that um it's like hell, but you suppose that you'll feel bad enough that eventually you'll turn to God because it's so unhappy to be there.
Okay. Explain me who gets into hell, who who gets in into purgatory according to the Catholic Church after some ministry by the year 1300. I think you can basically buy your way into purgatory through money or good deeds.
You understand? So what so what's really important to understand is the church determines who goes to purgatory. Okay,
right? That's number one. Number two is for indulgences indulgences, the church can also determine how long you stay in in purgatory. Do you understand? So what purgatory really is is a back door into heaven, right?
So, you really screwed up, but you're a trillionaire and you're like, "Well, you know what? I'll give you $2." And the church is like, "Fine. Then we'll give you a back door into heaven." Okay? And uh as long as your family continues to pay us off, then we'll lessen your time in purgatory. Do you understand?
So, at this time in history, purgatory is really a backdoor. That's point one. Okay. What else about purgatory at this point in history?
24:10Do do you guys you guys remember? Yes,
I remember a lot of fire in the imagery. Like there's just a lot of burning. So the purging is like how you extract finer metals from ore and and bad substances.
Okay. So um what's really important to appreciate is that uh before Dante heaven hell to they were not actually fleshed out. Okay. What what's genius about Dant is that he actually does flesh out them out into real worlds. He's a worldmaker.
He's a world builder. But before that uh hell, purgatory and heaven were just concepts. Right? So in Augustine State of God he will say that what heaven is is every day you're seeing with God. Okay?
which is a great image but it's a concept it's not a world whereas Donnie will actually build the world okay so I'm just saying like conceptually how is purgatory being described at this time in history the first is like it's really a backdoor into heaven all right it's an escape clause you should be burning in hell but if you give us a trillion dollars we'll put you in purgatory okay who else is who else is in purgatory infants Right. Okay. Infants. So another way of saying this is like this is a theological loophole. You guys you guys understand the idea where if I can't actually explain something using heaven and hell purgatory.
Okay. Well, I can't explain babies who die, right? Because they're innocent but they weren't baptized. So they can't belong in he hell but they don't belong in heaven either. So purgatory.
Okay. Do you guys understand what's going on? Where? Like if if there's ever a special case like I don't know what's going on. Purgatory, right?
So at this time in history, purgatory is not really developed.
26:10Okay. And in in in reality, purgatory is is only like a very special cases. But what Donnie does is he turns purgatory into another in a world equal to that of hell and heaven. Right? And at this time in history, most people aren't even thinking of purgatory because you because you you can't be that rich to buy people place in purgatory, right?
You have to be rich. You have to provide indulgences in order to get your relative into purgatory. And so this doesn't apply to most people, right? So explain to me what the difference is now. Yes.
Um to tie it all together, I think the fundamental message of Dante in the divine comedy is on the heaven side, right? It's it's it's it's unity, it's faith, hope, and love. Fundamentally, God is love, right? So that's a very simple message. And then you try to break it down.
as you try to break it down. I guess what I take purgatory to mean is that no matter which stage of purgatory you're in, there's a fundamental lesson to be learned. And if you learn that lesson, it doesn't matter where you are at in purgatory, you would be with self-reflection, with prayer, with conviction, you'd be able to learn that fundamental truth and profile yourself up to heaven. So I guess in my mind that ties it all together. Um um whereas in hell you're not you're not learning, right?
There's no growth mindset, right? So that the real distinction is between hell like the extremes of of uh of hell and heaven. Purgatory is just the process.
Okay. All right. So So let let's just list the differences. Okay. The difference between this and this is first of all it's democratic.
It means anyone everyone participates in the system. Purgatory was designed for special cases. Now it's like anyone, everyone
28:11can participate. Okay? If you're poor, you can still pray for your loved one in purgatory, right? Before you were poor, you were screwed because you you didn't have money to grab the church. So, first of all, it's democratic where everyone can participate.
Okay, that's point one. Uh point two is that it's really hopeful, right? where no matter how bad a person you are, as long as you are willing to repent or as long as someone really loves you or you in the past did someone a good favor, you would still be granted access to purgatory. Okay? So, it's hopeful.
Whereas at this time in history, uh the Catholic Church teaches you uh not to have any hope. Okay? Don't have hope. Just just believe in God. Uh yes.
And it's also action based rather than having to pay money or
Exactly. Okay. So yeah, so it u incentivizes action, right? Whereas this system is really about obedience, right? Incentivizes obedience.
Obey what the church says and you'll be granted purgatory. Here it's individual action, right? And the other thing is that this is a much more merciful and just system. Does that make sense? Right?
Because before the idea was only a few people could access heaven. Now it's like anyone everyone can access heaven but you have to work hard. Okay. So this is um so this is a radically different conception of purgatory. Explain why why this has to be the case.
Why does it
30:11have to be democratic, hopeful um in some of action and it has to be merciful and just in order for this to be unified? Yes,
it's consistent with his cosmology that God is love. Because if it's not democratic, not everyone can participate. It's only for the elite or the rich, then the kingdom of heaven is not for the poor like Jesus said in a sermon on the mount.
Exactly.
And so everything has to confirm to that.
That's right. Yes.
Yeah. That's also what I wanted to say. And to uh add on to that, I feel like for these different layers within purgatory is also separated by no love at the bottom which is like pride and then like uh whatever and then like going upwards is like not enough love like I don't know like envy and etc. And then at the end is like too much love.
Yes.
Than what you're supposed to have.
Exactly. You're right. Exactly. Right. So the it structure the the sorry it structure the way it is because this the last four okay they it's really a like misdirection of love right either too much or too little love.
Yes. Great. All right. Anyone else? Yes.
Can we say the ego dissipates as we go up? So pride you're loving yourself and by the end uh greed, gluttony and lust. You're loving the thing. Yes. instead of and so you're getting less and less of yourself.
Yes, exactly. That's that's great. Yes. Uh yes.
Going back to the biatitudes, this would be how the biatitudes would work because
the church almost at that time subverts that.
Right. Right. Exactly. Yes. Any other thoughts or comments?
Yes.
I'm going back to a comment a really smart person told me yesterday like why why does envy exist? Right. like somebody uh one of our classmates uh was
32:13commented that um it's actually pretty simple for you to get rid of envy if you're sufficiently smart enough. Right? So I'm I'm I'm looking at all these things in purgatory and I'm I'm I'm realizing like it's one and the same like in in some sense all these challenges that we have in purgatory is because of the lack of love and the lack of compassion and the lack of imagination right so so um if we can I know overcoming one is equivalent to overcoming all of them
yes
I just thank you yes
um I've started to think about the whole structure a little bit like um physically structured like a Christmas cracker.
Yes.
Where like there's a handle on either side and God pulling one one up one way and one the other way and that the middle section is like a even cylinder and the other two sections are like mountains or in the top case like a V.
Yes.
And so I think this kind of explains how there's a hierarchy but no hierarchy that none of them are better than the other. I want to ask if you think that pride is the most fundamental of the seven deadly sins. It's like the father of the of sins.
Pride? Huh?
Okay. Can you can you can you do you have an answer? Well, I think it's like the bedrock of the other sins because it's what fundamentally stops you from um dealing with dealing with your faults. I guess it's like arrog like the bad form of arrogance.
Explain to me why pride leads to laziness, sloth. because you believe your innate ability requires less action and energy to achieve your goals than you than the truth than in reality. So, um, but I don't really understand how pride would give you wrath or pride
34:13would give you gluttony. I mean, it just seems like the basis for misdirection,
right? Yeah. So um so Don would not say pride he would say ego right it's the ego that's basis of everything so the ego is basically how do you perceive yourself do you take yourself seriously right what do you think your role in the universe is how much agency do you have so the main thing undergirling everything okay is the idea of free will you guys understand this this this cosmology construct the way it is to ensure maximum free will. Okay, this entire structure is designed so like you at every point you have to believe you have a choice. Never ever must you believe that this is God's will.
There's nothing I can do about it. Okay, Don is trying to eliminate that possibility. So the co cosmologist can talk in a way like you can reason everything out and appreciate that it's your choice, not God's choice. Okay? Does that make sense?
That's the real purpose of this cosmology to coni convince you it's always your choice. It's always your free will. Everything that happens is because of what you do. Okay. Yes.
Would this kind of be in contradiction to people like Anne Selmma at the time who were really interested in describing how God was outside of time and that somehow his will was already in the universe.
That's right. That's right. So again, most theologians I would say every theologian would say that's just absurd. Like if we have all free will, what is the function of God in the universe? Right.
What is God doing? I mean we can't we I mean like it it would be so
36:13arrogant to think that um we can do whatever we want right so this goes goes against church theology um but this again is why this is a radical revolutionary poem for its time it's not so radical for us but for the year 1300 this is revolutionary idea like God is pure love pure love is to gift you free will and free choice and the entire cosmology ology is designed to ensure maximum agency, maximum free will. Okay? Does that make sense, guys? All right. All right.
Let's uh go to candle 15 and um I I want to do as much as possible today. Okay. Because this is the um last two days, okay? Believe it or not, we we we we've been doing this for a long time, right?
10 days.
10 days. Okay.
Uh and and how how long does it feel to you guys?
Does it feel does it feel like a long time?
Okay. Yes. Just a comment because I remember I read this in that same manipul piece. But he summarizes uh the sins of purgatory I think quite nicely and he says that the first three sins are the effect of love perverted. The last three are profane, love, excessive, and the middle one, sloth, is love, defective.
That's right. Exactly. Yes. Okay. Exactly.
So, it has to do all has to do with love. Um, great. Thank you so much. Okay. Um, also I want to apologize uh to everyone like not learning your names.
I'm terrible with names and I knew that there was going to be some shifting over the course of these um um two weeks. But now it's second last day. I want to learn your names. I I want to get to know you better. Okay.
All right. So um when I call on you, please please let you let me know your name. All right. So
38:13this is um candle 15. Okay. As many as the hours in which the sphere that's always playing like a child appears from daybreak to the end of the third hour, so many were the hours of light still left before the course of day had reached sunset. Vespers was there and where we are midnight. When sunlight struck directly at our faces, for we had circled so much of the mountain that now we headed straight into the west.
Then I could feel my vision overcome by radiance greater than I'd sensed before. And unaccounted things left me amazed at which that they might serve me as a shade. I lifted up my hands above my brow to limit some of that excessive splendor. As when a ray of light from water or mirror lapses in the opposed direction and rises at an angle equal to its angle of descent, and to each side the distance from the vertical is equal, as science and experiment have shown. So did it seem to me that I had been struck there by light reflected facing me at which my eyes turned elsewhere rapidly.
Kind father, what is that against which I have tried in vain? I said to screen my eyes it seems to move toward us. And he replied, don't wonder if you're still dazzled by the family of heaven. A messenger has come and he invites us to ascend. Soon in the sight of such things, there will be no difficulty for you, but delight as much as nature fashioned you to feel.
No sooner had we reached the blessed angel than with glad voice he told us enter here these are less steep than were the other stairs.
Um so what's happening is that um now and then Donnie is getting blinded. Why? Because an angel that is so radiant is coming down and to basically remove a pee from his forehead and allow him to ascend further. And it seems like doc Virgil knows all this right? Do you understand the paradox here where Virgil he is a pagan and he um has been in limbo all his life but he knows all how
40:15all this works. He knows the entire structure of purgatory as well as uh infernal. Why is this the case?
Yes.
Because he had the divine spark in him of the poet.
That's right. Even though he chose to pervert
he that that's exactly right. Okay. So this is something that you guys must appreciate. All poets are prophets. All prophets are poets.
Jesus was a poet. If you read his um quotations from in the Bible, it's poetry. Okay. Uh yes.
Then why doesn't Dante know the way?
Excuse me.
Why doesn't Dante know the way? Because Dante is also a poet.
Who says he doesn't know the way? He keeps asking questions.
Um, okay. Let's think think about this. Okay. Why does he So, let's just assume he Don is a poet. He knows everything.
Why? Why does he need Virgil to guide him? Explain this to me. Yes. I think he I think people do this for themselves.
Like when you talk to yourself, it's similar to that where you need an outside other entity to try and talk to you. And it's like your inner voice is giving you instructions. So you need to give that inner voice a being and a body of some kind so that it's stops you against pride or arrogance that it's you doing it.
Yeah. So, I mean, if you go to the gym, everyone knows how to work out, right? Like, you just watch YouTube videos and it'll tell you exactly how to work out. Why do you need a trainer, right? Is a trainer going to really add knowledge to your routine?
Probably not. But your trainer is just going to tell you like just focus, right? That's all the trainers say, focus, focus, focus.
42:15That's what Virgil is doing. He's saying focus, focus, focus. Right? All right. Does that make sense?
So um Donnie would not be on this journey unless he was a poet. Unless he were a poet. Okay, keep on going. Line 37. We climbed already past that point.
Behind us we heard Bayati Merordes sung and then rejoice you who have overcome. I and my master journeyed on alone. We two together upward as we walked. I thought I'd gather profit from his words. And even as I turned toward him, I asked, "What did the spirit of Romana mean when he said sharing cannot have a part?" And his reply, "He knows the harm that lies in his worst vice.
If he chastises it to ease its experation, do not wonder. For when your longing center on things such that sharing them a portionsless to each, then envy stirs the bellows of your size. But if the love within the highest sphere should turn your longings heavenward, the fear inhabiting your breast would disappear. For there the more there are who should say ours so much the greater is the good possessed by each. So much more love burns in that cloister.
I'm more hungry now for satisfaction, I said, than if I'd held my tongue before. I host a deeper doubt within my mind. How can a good that's shared by more possessors enable each to be more rich in it than if that good had been possessed by few? and heed to me. But if you still persist in letting your mind makes on earthly things, then even from true light you gather darkness.
The good, ineffable and infinite which is above directs itself toward love as light directs itself to polished bodies. Where order is that good gives of itself, and where more love is there, that good confers a greater measure of eternal worth. And when there are more souls above who love, there's more to love well there, and they love more a mirror like each soul reflects the other. And if my speech has not appeased your hunger, you will see beatus. She will fulfill this and all other longings
44:16that you feel now only strive so that the other five wounds may be canceled quickly as the two already are. The wounds contrition heals.
Okay, so Virgil is just telling us what we'll learn in paradise, right? Like the unifying force of the universe is love. The more we love, the more God glows in in us. And so if we turn away from material obsessions then we will recognize this and we will create more and more love in the world. So love can be infinite but wealth has to be finite.
Okay. Um okay keep on reading
line 82. But wanting then to say you have appeased me. I saw that I had reached another circle and my desiring eyes made me keep still. There I see him suddenly to be caught up in an ecstatic vision and to see some people in temple and a woman just as the threshold in the gentle manner that mothers use was saying, "Oh my son, why have you done this to us? You can see how we have sought you sorrowing your father and I." And at this point, as she fell still, what had appeared at first now disappeared.
Then there appeared to me another woman upon her cheeks the tears that grief distills when it is born of much scorn for another. She said, "If you're ruler of that city to name which even goddesses once pride, where every science had its source of light, revenge yourself on the presumptuous arms that embrace our daughters, oh pisitus, and her lord seems to mean benign and mild." His aspect temperate as he replied, "What shall we do to one who injure us if one who loves us earns our condemnation?" Next, I saw people whom the fire wrath had kindled and they stoned at youth and kept on shouting loudly to each other, "Kill, kill, kill." I saw him now down by death sink to the ground. Although his eyes were bent, but were always on heaven, they were heaven's gates. Praying to his high lord despite the torture to pardon those who were his persecutors. His wolf was such that and lofted compassion.
46:16And when my soul returned outside itself and that met the things outside it that are real, I then could recognize my not false error.
Okay, stop. Okay. All right. So, uh there are three stories here. Okay.
The first story is from the gospel of Luke where um Mary and Joseph they lose Jesus when Jesus is 12. And and and why do do you guys remember the gospel of Luke? Where's Jesus when when he's 12 years old? Uh yes. Sorry.
What was your name?
I'm Anna.
Yes. So he went to the temple to debate or argue with or teach the rabbis, the teachers of the law, and they were amazed by his genius. That's right. And then it was at the end of a wedding feast. So the parents were probably busy with the guest and then they couldn't find him and they found him finally.
Yeah. Like where are you?
Yeah. So this is a story from the Gospel of Luke. And you can imagine how angry Mary is at him, right? It's like you know, you had us worried. We thought you were lost, but it turned out no you there's there's nothing to worry about.
There's nothing to be angry about. Jesus is just being Jesus. Okay. The second story comes to us from Athens where the wife or the ruler of Athens is angry that um like a a a man is chasing their daughter and begging her for marriage. And the wife is like how presumptuous this man is.
He is beneath us. So we should punish him. And then Pac Piderus the the king. Why are we punishing someone who flatters us? Right?
Isn't he flattering us that we that um he wants our daughter in marriage? And if people who are nice to us we punish then people who are mean to us what do we deal with? Okay. All right. So it shows the the ignorance of wrath of anger.
And the last example is also from the Bible the story of St. Steven who is stoned to death for idolatry by the um Jews in Jerusalem.
48:18Okay, he was the first martyr of the Christian tradition. You will find this in the acts of the apostles and rather than uh be angry what uh Steven does is pray for their forgiveness. Okay. All right. So these are three examples of how to deal with wrath.
Okay. Understanding um and forgiveness. What are these things? How how does see these things?
Excuse me.
But I'm saying like how does he actually see these things? Yes. kind of like the artworks maybe of
priorities. It's similar to the artwork, right? But are these artworks?
These are movies kind of like visions because they disappear after a while.
No, no, like like But how does he see them before? How did he have his visions?
Dream.
Dreaming was the first, right? Then it was the artwork. Right now, what's happening? It's like the ecstatic visions of St. Teresa.
These are daydreams. You guys understand? He's actually seeing them as he walks. All right, this is like lucid daydreaming. How does this happen?
Okay, we understand how dreams work. We understand how artwork works, right? We we spend all time discussing artwork, but how does this work? You just have visions like you're just walking through. Wow.
Like I have this image in my head, right? Yes. Oh, sorry. So, what's your name?
Uh, Fred.
Fred. Okay. Yes.
Um, I guess it's like reflected light. I don't want to say like psychedelics, but the the Kantos kind of start where he's saying, "I'm trying to cover my eyes,
50:18but the light's bouncing in no matter what." So, it's kind of like it's impossible for him not to see it. The mechanism is very mysterious. I still think though.
Okay, it's possible. Okay, but that makes no sense. Reflected light, doesn't it blind you? I mean, I I guess it blinds him and then he has these visions, right? But but again, like where are these visions coming from?
We understand the artwork. We understand the dreams. The dreams is from heaven. Yes.
Um maybe it's just imagination, but it's is um it's another level is high at a higher level of imagination. Anyone else? It is definitely imagination, but I'm like I'm I'm trying to figure out how this works. Okay. So, um we we we will spend a lot of time discussing this idea.
Okay. Um so, we're trying to figure out how the mind works today. Okay. And who studed psychology? Okay.
You studied psychology, right? How how do we have memories? Do tell us.
There's like the short-term and long-term memories. And so there's a transfer between so first you have the knowledge that's going into your brain and it sucks like very shortly
and then through a process of um rethinking of it. So basically it's very like loose memory in the short term and then it goes to the long term and you need to work on it back and forth for it to strengthen.
Okay. Right. So so what is your name?
Uh Franel.
Franel. Okay. Okay. Um so let me explain the neuroscience. Okay.
What neuroscientists believe how memory works. Okay. So the idea is you have in the beginning okay short-term memory the short-term memory is filtered through your senses
52:18um into um long-term memory and how the memory is then dealt with is that it's divided into categories determined by emotions. Okay, do you understand? So if the emotion is anger, it goes in the anger box. If it's happy, it goes in happy box. And then if it's sad, it goes in sad box, right?
It's basically just emotions. So your all your memories are categorized by their emotional value. And then based on um the uh order of your emotions, this then leads to your world view, okay? or your identity. Um and then that becomes part of your senses which then determines what memories you uh remember, what memories you don't remember.
Okay? So in other words, uh first of all, you only remember things that have emotional value. Okay. It's why in school you actually don't remember what you learn in the classroom, but you remember a lot what you did with your friends. Okay.
Yes. two types where there is one linked to emotions and one like only to knowledge but it's right it's harder to remember it
that's right that's right
but there is two categories
you're going to use brute force to to
okay yeah exactly okay
and because there is no recall also then it's just hard to remember it
yes
if you learn math and you never think of math and
that's right okay all right so uh yeah so the memories are into emotional values you remember what has emotional value unless you use rot memorization to remember useless facts like mathematics. Okay. Um and the entire point is to develop your world view. And why is worldview important? Because it tells you your place in society, right?
It tells you who you are and what your relationship is with other people. It helps you navigate. Okay. So, so really this entire system is designed for us to
54:18be social animals to interact with others, to work with others, to compete with others. Okay. All right. Yes.
I'm Andy.
Hi, Andy. So in this process would you call the unconscious like uncatategorized things that are seeping into our dreams or would you call it like the the divine speaking to us?
Okay. Yeah. So again this is neuroscience. Okay. Uh they do divide between a conscious and a subconscious.
Right. Subconscious. The conscious is this decision- making whereas subconscious determines your action. Okay. So what neuros say is like we are um conscious robots.
Okay. We have actually no control of ourselves but we think we do. Okay. We we we just rationalize our actions but it's the emotions that determine our actions. Okay.
So who you are is your subconscious not really your conscious. Who you think you are is not really who you are. Okay. So this is from neuroscience. Are are we clear about this?
Okay. Um this creates a lot of problems right because obviously you're like okay if this is the case where does the imagination come from? And how is it that people like Dante and Virgil and Shakespeare, they're able to create characters that are realistic and which is not part of their emotional experience. Like how does that work? Right?
If everything is stored in your brain and you can only know what you experience, then how how does Dante know Virgil? Does that make sense? Yes.
I I'm I'm just going along with the neuroscience explanation. Neuroscience would say that they're able to simulate these characters in their kind of own networks and talk to them. Talk to the simulation.
Okay. Yes.
56:22It's go going a bit far, but you can I think you can I'd never read of it, but you can prime yourself with imagination. And if you look and read a lot of books, look at art, then just it opens your mind into creating stuff. And maybe the more you see new things then the more you're able to create stuff.
Okay, I understand. Okay, but all you're telling me is like Virgil is a projection of Dante, right? Virgil exists within Dante's larger imagination. But if we read the but what we're doing is we're reading the divine comedy and we see Virgil as a completely different person from Dante with his own contradictions with his own worldview. Right?
And if you read Shakespeare, you also have people like that. In Shakespeare, you have Hamlet. Uh you have they all characters are distinct individuals. So if they are all just projections of Shakespeare, I don't know how that works. Uh
uh I'm Edward.
Yes.
Um somehow he's managed to plug himself into the collective consciousness.
Yeah, that's what I think. Okay, we we'll talk more about this later. Okay. But but but yes
and just one more thing is that I think the reason why he's able to um simulate ver create Virgil so well is that if you imagine like the subconscious the the field of consciousness of the universe is like play-doh or clay when he's reading the anerid a lot and it's almost like he's feeling in closer and closer detail the sculpture that is the anerid and so when he's really reading it he feels these thumbrints, these grooves of the nail where he's able to see the human mind of Virgil as you say by reading the Anid so closely that he's able to see feel the poet behind the words and therefore have such a deep empathy for him that the empathy creates like a bubble of another being and that that's how he plugs in.
Okay, that's a very logical explanation.
58:24I don't think that's that's what's happening. I don't think he's creating Virgil. I think he's summoning Virgil. There's a difference. You guys understand there's there there's you can create Virgil, right?
using the same process that you just described and that's very logical but I think what's happening is that he summoned Virgil because to me I can't I've read the Iniad and I don't think the Virgil in the Divine Comedy can be extrapolated from reading the Iniad alone because there is because Virgil if you read Virgil and like you just hear the way he speaks right it's it's like it feels like a real person and why it feels like a real person is the contradictions, the nuance, the subtlety cannot be created by you alone. You have to summon this person. Does that make sense? So, it's like he's it's like he spent his entire life with Virgil as his best friend and they're just talking to each other all the time. So, he understands this guy's peculiarities, right?
Does that make sense? There's certain things, there's certain qu corks that like you cannot imagine it, you cannot create it. It just has to be that person. Yes,
it just reminds me when I was reading about Machaveli, there was at the time some guy called Valentino Borgger. Um, he got a letter of recommendation where this guy wrote that he was the reincarnation of Thomas Aquinus and it made the Catholic Church really, really afraid because they didn't want anybody to know about summoning angels and demons and stuff.
Yeah, I think Don has summoned Virgil here. It's very hard for me to explain how this could work otherwise. Okay? Because like we're reading the relationship between Donnie and Virgil very closely, right? And like I'm not finding a contradiction in Virgil.
Do you understand? Right. And like we're able to go into the very psychology of Virgil as an independent actor, right? where it will say like if Donn is doing this then this is Virgil's response
60:26and it matches perfectly with the text. Yes.
Oh friend that Dente was friend with and then he just wrote Virgil and his name. It's what I imagine. Same for Beatatric you know like it's so real that I think it's actually a friend in real life just transferred a name. Um that is also a possibility. But then you raise the question of like how does the Virgil that is created right?
How how does the Virgil in Divine comedy how does it match perfectly with the Virgil who wrote the Iniad? Do you understand? Because when we talk to Virgil you read the Iniad you're like okay this is the guy who wrote the the Iniad. Right? Because when you read read the Iniad, what you're reading is the persona of Virgil who wrote the Iniad.
Okay? Does that make sense? Because remember in divine com there are three Dantes, right? There's Dante the pilgrim, the character. There's Dante the historical person, the real person.
There's D the poet. And all three are different because Dante the pilgrim obviously is the protagonist. Dante the real person is a real person. But Dante the poet is a person who is trying to talk to us. You understand?
Okay. So, he's trying to create the ding comment in a way that speaks to us and I don't know how you do that unless you're a real person. Okay. Whereas and in in Virgil, yes, if you if you think about Virgil and you were to bring him outside and like ask him about the Inad, he would know the Iniad like intimately, right? He's like, "Yeah, it's obviously he wrote he wrote the Iniad." So, you're all providing good theories and hypothesis, but I mean, having thought very deeply about this, I think he just summoned Virgil.
And this is like the real Virgil, right? And this is absurd because Donnie lived around the year 1300 and Virgil lived the year about like, you know, during the time of Jesus, like like uh not time of Jesus,
62:28but but a generation before. Okay. So, we're talking like 1300 years difference. How's this possible? Uh yes.
Uh yeah, you know I think this uh Virgil is uh just usher right. So I think Danny have read a lot of thing about R uh Virgil. So maybe they just imagine this the role in his mind just like reason because sometime we need to think about something by reason and not by emotion
but emotion. So
so I write novels. Okay. I write novels. Okay. And I I'll tell I'll I'll tell you my writing process.
Um, what happens is I get up in the morning and I have visions and I'm like, I need to write these visions down and hon and like if I don't write these visions down, then I'm just going to be haunted for the rest of my life. So, I'll just write these visions down and I'll be left alone. So, I write these visions down. Okay? And when I'm writing these visions, I don't know what happens.
It feel like I'm when I'm writing, it feels like someone's taking possession of me and I'm just writing things. And then I'm writing about these characters and I'm like I don't know these people. Okay. It's it's it's like it's it's not like I'm creating these people. It's like these are being revealed to me.
And then um I finished writing and I I look at these characters like I don't know these people. I've never met these people and they feel real to me. But not only that, but I feel as though these characters not only are talking to me, but they're talking to themselves independently. Okay. And then and I'm exhausted after a day's work and I fall asleep and like, okay, well, my mind is blank and I'm not going to have any more visions.
Now, in the morning, I get up again and I have more visions. Okay? And then I keep on working and then at the end of my novel, what happens is like I look back and it's like, how is it possible for me to world build? Okay. How is it possible for me to create all these people that are independent of each other, have different personalities, but they are
64:30true to themselves, and they're true to each other. Okay? And I'm like, I don't know these people. I've never had this in my own my life. And like, I can't explain the process.
And that's why I think that what's happened here is that Don has summoned Virgil because these are two very different people. They're alike in some ways, but they're two different people. Okay. All right. So now what I'm going to do is I'm I'm going to present another theory of how this works.
Okay. And this is more in line with Dante's theory of how this works. So So we know the door of science. Okay. This is a standard theory of memory and identity.
Right. Right. I mean this this is what you're taught in school. Okay. Now I'm going to present to you a different theory.
Okay. All right. So for Dante we have the divine spark. The divine spark is not a light in us. It's our soul.
And our soul is not um a part of us. It is it is us. It's it's basically like our electrical field. Okay? It it's it's an aura around us.
Okay? That's the real soul. Okay? Um and the soul doesn't exist in our dimension. It exists in different dimensions.
All right? Um, and we also know from Dante that there is a god and this god is the emanation of the universe, the source of the universe and we're all connected to to this god. Okay, so the entire cosmos is connected. Okay, so imagine um the cosmos as this infinite eternal mind. Okay.
And what happens is that when we have an emotion, okay, the emotions aren't stored inside our brains. They're stored inside this universal consciousness as what Carl Young would say, as what Manny Hall would say. Okay. Right. Do first of all, Edward, do do you want to explain to us the theory before I I explain it myself?
I think it's it's just where you're
66:31going that there's this idea that rather than the the memories are stored in our physical beings there is some a collective consciousness and through uh different methods uh that some people propose there is a way of uh channeling this and I don't know the exact um stories of it but I know that there for example even in in sort of the contemporary world there are some sources about for example like your very young children that have knowledge of things that there there is no way that they would have known happen.
So people really can't explain this. Uh so this is a separate theory that's
Yeah.
So so my eldest son Chris who who you met and you guys met him as well cuz he came in and like just you know walked around. But when he was 2 years old he told us mom dad I'm an alien from another planet. Like okay we believe you. We really do. Okay.
Because when we because we've seen him and he's like he's not like me. He's not his mother. He's he's his own person. And like when he was two years old, he he told he told us he's from another planet. So the first thing we asked him, of course, is like what planet?
And he mentioned the name. I can't remember it, but like for him it was real. Okay. So it seems as though like he came in with already memories of a past life and possibly many many past lives. I'm not sure if you had a similar experience with your children, but you know.
Yeah. Like like no my they're aliens. Yes. Okay. So um yeah back to this here okay so there is a universal consciousness okay and think of it as an infinite eternal grid so what happens is that when we have emotions they're not stored inside the brain they're stored inside this universal mind okay and there and these memories go in different different locations so so if it's a bad memory like a bad emotion hate then it might be lower but but if it's a a good emotion like happiness and joy bliss then it's probably higher and higher in the place.
Okay. Okay. So, this is this is where the memories are stored. Okay. But not only
68:32that, but Evelyn's memories are stored here, right? So, it's like it's like the internet. And so what happens is that over time certain regions become like alive themselves because they are being uh because there's so much memories being stored in this place, right? It becomes alive itself and that's where where we get the idea of like ghosts and spirits and demons. Okay?
And so in other words, what happens is like when we have memories, okay, not only do we store the memories in a certain place, but this place also communicates, connects with us, okay? And so um so basically you you're an independent person but also you're a collection of different memories from different eras which means you're also a collection of different individuals from different times. Does that make sense? Okay. Why is this important?
Because now gives us insight into how art works. Right? Because what art really is, it is a portal or a mechanism to enhance your connection to this universal consciousness, this internet. Okay? Does it make sense?
Okay. So when that happens, then not only do you feel more, but you feel more. Remember these emotions come with their own memories, with their own visions. Then these visions come available to you. Okay?
So that's what art and dreaming does. It connects you to this universal web. But if the connection is really strong, then you don't need these uh agents to provoke you. You just see them yourself. And so that's what's happened happened to Dante.
So what's happened is like he um he's now able to see these visions
70:33for himself without um artwork. And the reason why he's able to see them, what has given him sight is the fact that he's cleansing himself of his sins, right? Because you see sins, what sins really do is they bulk you down to material world and they make you forget the universal truth, right? Which is the universal consciousness. So the more virtuous a life you you live, the more visions you have because the greater your connection to the divine.
All right, do you guys understand this? Any questions about this theory? Yes.
But uh I understand you can uh summon this um historical figures into your mind. Um it's like a seance, right? Uh but what but can you like summon this like fictional characters like let's say you're writing a you're writing a novel, right? And and these characters they're not they do not existed in the they didn't exist in the in the real world, right? So, can you summon like fictional characters?
What? But I mean like like this is an infinite universe, right? There's infinite people. So, so when you're writing fiction, all you're doing is you're summoning someone from from here. Yes.
Also, just to answer that through through this lens, like the fictional characters uh are basically real characters. Like they're not really That's right. Like we're all sort of part of the same
collection of archetypes.
Yes. Because when we read fiction, we're we read it because it's real to us, right? Because explaining these universal truths to us. Uh yes.
So does that mean whenever a person writes a novel and the characters in their novel um is sum summited
if he's a good writer. Yeah. But he could be a bad writer in which case he's just making crap up. Okay. But but how's the the difference like the um why do
72:35some writers write a good novel novel and others write a bad novel?
Because like the writer has different connection to the divine. Okay? Like no no no it's really simple. Okay? You if you choose to be a writer, you're probably a crappy writer.
You understand? It's like I want to be a writer and be I want to be famous. You're probably a crappy writer. Okay? If you're a good writer, you're just born that way.
I I hate to say this, okay? Writers are not uh writers are chosen by God. Dante was chosen. Virgil was chosen. Too bad.
Okay. Uh yes. Act of feeling lighter. I feel like when you're lighter, your ideas come from a spiritual world. Whereas if you're really heavy, then it's just like material like, "Oh, I'm lacking money or I'm I'm late." And so there's really a link into feeling lighter and having better ideas.
That's exactly right. Yes. Remember in so sorry so sorry so sorry so sorry so sorry so sorry so sorry so sorry so sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry uh Anna uh sorry so let me respond to this and and then um so remember how how in hell the lowest level is Lucifer right and he's become a machine so he's lost all consciousness because he's lost the connection to this universal consciousness right uh yes
but I have a problem with this theory because in that way then it's like Ecclesiastes there's nothing new under the son everything we write in fiction is a real person in the past. So then we actually lost our imagination because we don't create anything new.
So Carol's shaking her head. Yes.
Uhhuh. But oh okay. So like all this collective consciousness memories are not from
there's no time.
No time in space.
Oh okay. Right.
This is this is all the past. It's also the future.
Oh I see. I see.
Okay. Okay. Because otherwise explain to me how Dante is able to have such revolutionary ideas in his time. Right?
Because like these ideas that he's presenting never existed before. So what he's done is he's looked into the
74:35future.
Okay.
Right. Okay. Does it make sense guys? Okay. So again what's really important is as Carol says this is beyond time and space.
Okay. This is literally God. Okay. This system. Okay.
God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, everything that was and everything that will be. Okay. So, when you actually access the system, not only are you accessing the past, but you're also accessing the future. Okay. Yeah.
Uh, but do you have like a better imagery for like your concept? Because it's really hard to write down what you did here. Like do you have a better way to like do a drawing about like what's happening with like bubbles or stuff?
Let's Google this. Okay. It's called Indra's Pearl. Can you Google this, please? Indra Pearl.
Okay. All right. Uh uh or Android web. Is that that
web? Okay. Just this. Yeah. Does this make more sense to you?
The web Since you've studied the brain, sinapsies, right? Sinapses, neurons, neuro connections.
Yeah.
Okay. So, the idea is that God is with is within us and we are within God. Does that make sense? That's that's a trick to understand that we are it's hard to draw because both are both are true at the same time,
76:35right? We are we are within God and God is within us. So the universe is within us
when you
and we are the universe.
When you draw you would collapse it into two dimension which is which is not.
Yeah.
Also you you need this fractalss right fractal. So you are just a fractal of the universe and what what's a fractal? Fractal is just a reflection of the universe, right? So within you is the universe itself and but you're also a part of the universe. God is in you and you are inside God.
Okay? Does it make sense guys? All right. This is really important because once you know this then the rest of Dante uh is is easier to understand. Okay.
But but the point is like now that he has this connection to the vine because he's inspired by art work. He's committed to change and because he's cleansing himself of more and more sins, the visions will become much more vibrant. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Yeah. This this actually what I wanted. Okay. You guys see this? Okay.
This is the best we can probably do. You are inside God. God is inside you. You guys do you guys see this? Yes.
I was just going to say also bringing it more to uh contemporary thought like we're talking about how Dante can clean him clean himself get better uh connection to the collective conscious but it's also quite similar to in Hinduism and in yoga when they have the idea of kundalini right that if you abstain from all these desires you do very deep meditation over years and years
yes
many people reported that they have these visions and
that's right
connections to this highc Exactly. Exactly. I mean, this is just a universal truth. Okay. It's something that I've experienced in my life where um when I write novels, like I just don't I don't create.
I just, you know, channel. If you if you if you create um honestly, you're you're probably not very good. So so so let me tell you a
78:37funny story. Um so, uh my mentor is Ev, but also Gay. Gay is one of the most famous writers in America. He's 94 years old and we were 25 years ago. We were we were on a cruise ship in Shanghai and there was three of us.
There was Galiss his wife Nantles who is one of the most famous publishers in America. She published Margaret Atwood and um all these famous writers including Joan Ddian and um she was telling us how Phil Knight you guys know who Phil Phil Knight is right a billionaire.
Nike. Yeah. He's found of Nike and and she was telling us how obsessed Phil Knight is with writing a book. In fact, Phil Knight would just come to her office every single day and sit there for like two hours just to meet her and talk to her talk to her about the book he wants to write. And Natalie is like he is awful.
He's like the worst writer ever. Okay. Um um but I mean imagine he did publish a book. It's called Shoe Dog and it's it's a bestseller. But, you know, he's he's the richest he's one of the richest men in the world.
And he's like, you know, I want to be a writer. And he spent, you know, these decades going to like these workshops, hiring writers, learning the craft, but but then Niss is like, you know, um he's not a very good writer, but he is just so joyful and enthusiastic and happy about writing. He says he wants to write because it brings him tremendous joy. And then Gay Lee said, "Well, if you're really stupid, you could be very happy as a writer." Okay. All right.
True story. Um, like if you just suck, you would find tremendous pleasure in writing. But if you're really good, you would find only agony and suffering in writing because uh you recognize that when you write, uh, you're not actually in control. Okay? You're you're being possessed.
You're you're channeling. Okay? Right? Does it make sense to you guys? All right.
All right. Let's continue.
80:41Line 115th. And when my soul returned outside itself and met the things outside it that are real, I then could recognize my not false errors. My guide on seeing me behave as if I were a man who's freed himself from sleep, what's wrong with you? You can't walk straight. For more than half a league now you have moved with clouded eyes and lurching legs as if you were a man whom wine or sleep has gripped.
Oh,
oh my kind father, if you hear me out, I'll tell you what pured to me, I said, when I had lost the right youth of my leg, and he, although you had a hund masks upon your face, that still would not conceal for me the thoughts you thought, however slight. What you have seen was shown, lest you refuse to open your heart unto the waters of peace that pour from the eternal fountain. I did not ask what's wrong with you. As one who only sees with earthly earthly eyes, which ones the body stripped of soul lies dead can't see. I asked so that your feet might find more force, so must one urge the indolent.
Too slow to use their waking time when it returns. We made our way until the end of vespers, peering as far ahead as sight could stretch. at rays of light that although late were bright but gradually smoke as black as night began to overtake us and there was no place where we could have avoided it of pure air and sight.
Okay. So we uh were in the terrace of law but they're all so busy you don't have time to talk. Okay. Now moving up to the terrace of wrath and and the thing about the wrath uh ter of wrap is all black smoke. Okay.
All right. My way.
Kanto 16. Darkness of hell and of a night deprived of every planet under meager skies as overcast by clouds that sky can be. Had never served to veil my eyes so thickly, nor covered them with such rough textured stuff as smoke that wrapped us there in purgatory. My eyes could not endure remaining open so that my faithful, knowledgeable escort drew
82:42closer as he offered me his shoulder. Just as a blind man moves behind his guide, that he not stray or strike against something that may do damage to or even kill him. So I moved through the bitter filthy air while listening to my guide who kept repeating not cut off from me. But I heard voices and each seemed to pray unto the lamb of God who takes away our sins for peace and mercy. Agnus day was sung repeatedly as their exordium.
Words sung in such a way in unison that fullest concord seemed to be among them. Master, are those whom I hear spirits? I asked him. You have grasped rightly, he replied. And as they go, they lose the knot of anger.
Then who are you whose body pierces through our smoke, who speak of as exactly like a man who uses months to measure time? A voice said this, "Oh, on hearing it, my master turned round to me, replied to him, then ask if this way leads us to the upward path, and I, oh creature, who that you return fair unto him who made you cleanse yourself, you shall hear wonders if you follow me. I'll follow you as far as I'm allowed," he answered. "And if smoke won't let us see, hearing will surf instead to keep us linked." Then I began with those same swaddling bands that death unwinds I take my upward path. I've come here by way of health exactions.
Since God so gathered me into his grace that he would have me in a manner most unusual for modern see his court. Do not conceal from me who you once were before your death and tell me if I go straight to the past your words will be our escort. I was a Lumbard and I was called Marco. I knew the world's ways and I loved those good for which the bows of all men now grow slack. The way you've taken leads directly upward.
So he replied and then he added, I pray you to pray for me when you're above and I to him I pledge my faith to you to do what you have asked. And yet a doubt will burst in me if it finds no way out. Before my doubt was simple, but your statement has doubled it and made me sure that I'm
84:42right to couple your word with anothers. The world indeed has been stripped utterly of every virtue. As you said to me, it cloaks and is cloaked by perversity. Some place the cause in heaven some below. But I beseech you to define the cause that seeing it I may show it to others.
Aside from which sorrow formed, O was his beginning. Then he answered, "Brother, the world is blind, and you come from the world. You living ones continue to assign to heaven every cause as if it were the necessary source of every motion. If this were so, then your free will would be destroyed and there would be no equity and joy for doing good and grief for evil.
Okay. So, um Donnie meets a man named Marco Lombard and they engage in a debate of discussion. Okay. Has to do with the nature of free will and we as we explained earlier free will has to be the fundamental law of the universe for the universe to work properly. Okay.
Uh if you just think that God intervenes uh and that a lot of things are predetermined, um you're not incentivized to do any good and evil. Okay, you become fatalistic. And uh so he says that free will has to be the fundamental law of the universe. Okay. Uh keep on going.
73. The heavens set your appetites in motion, not all your appetites. But even if that were the case, you have received both light on good and evil and free will, which though it struggled in its first wars with the heavens, then conquers all, if it has been well nurtured, on greater power, better nature, you who are free, depend force and genders the mind in you outside the heavens way. Thus if the present world has gone astray and you is the cause and you it's to be sought and now I'll serve as your true exedite issuing from his hand the soul on which he thought with love before creating it is like a child who weeps and laughs in sport that soul is simple unaware but since a joyful maker gave it motion it turns willingly to things that bring delight at first it
86:43savors trivial goods these would beguile the soul and it runs after them unless there's guide or rain to rule its of therefore one needed law to serve as curb. A ruler too was needed. One who would discern at least the tower of the true city. The laws exist, but who applies them now? No one, the shepherd, who precedes his flock and chew the cut, but does not have cleft hoops.
And thus the people who can see their guides snatch only at that good for which they feel some greed, would feed on that, and seek no further. Miss Rule, you see, has caused the world to be malevolent. The cause is clearly not celestial forces. They do not corrupt. For Rome, who made the world good used to have two sons, and they made visible two paths, the world's path and the pathway that is God's.
Each has eclipsed the other. Now the sword has joined the shepherd's crook. The two together must of necessity result in evil. Because so joined, one need not feed the other, fear the other. And if you doubt me, watch the fruit and flower.
For every plant is known by what it sees. Within the territory watered by Adij and Po, one used to find valor and courtesy. That is before Frederick was met by strive. Now anyone ashamed of talking with the right righteous or of meeting them can journey there secure. True.
Three old men are there in whom old times reprove the new and they find God is slow and summoning them to a better life. Curado de Palazzo Good Guerado and Guido de Castell whom it is better to call as do the French the candid Lombard. You can conclude the church of Rome confounds two powers in itself into the filth. It falls and fouls itself in its new burden. Good Marco, I replied, you reason well and now I understand why Levy's sons were not allowed to share in legacies.
But what Gerardo is this whom you mention as an example of the vanished people whose present would reproach the savage age? Either your speech deceives me or would
88:44tempt me, he answered then, for you whose speech is Tuscan seem to know nothing of the good Gardo. There's no other name by which I know him unless I speak of him as Gaia's father. God be with you. I come with you no father. You see the rays that penetrate the smoke already whitening.
I must take leaf. the angel has arrived before he sees me. So he turned back and would not hear me more.
Okay. So just to summarize the speech, what he's doing is he's just um explaining how the universe works as we'll learn in paradise, right? So God gave us free will. That is his greatest gift to us. And what allows us to know what's good, what's bad is we're always seeking to return to him, right?
We want to turn towards him and that's what brings us eternal delight. But because we are young, we're immature, we don't appreciate that. So we um get lost and get confused and we seek material pleasures. And in this chaos um a ruler will come and try to organize us and steer us towards God. Um but eventually uh the ruler becomes corrupt himself.
And then what happens is God has sent sent a divine messenger like Jesus or Homer or Dante to remind us of who we are to remind us that we are divine sparks that seek to return to God. And then from this person will arise a religion, a church. And at first that's good, but then what happens is that the church and empire combine together and then this causes a lot of corruption. Um um but the main point is yes even though this is just a natural course of history um free will is the fundamental law of the universe and therefore we must take responsibility for our actions on earth. We can't be like well the god god made made us this way or whatever.
No no god gave us all free choice. Whatever we do is because we choose to. So if we don't like things the way they are we have to go fix it. Okay. Yes.
Um so the
90:47fundamental rule of universe is free will then how to um but you said before there are good writers and bad writers does that mean a kind of deterministic um
no no writers are yes
I think that the way I would answer this is just that bad writers are not good at organizing the inspiration they receive so they receive visions and characters and stories But the way they write it means that other beings have a hard time putting their minds in the story. So they just miscommunicate whatever their inspiration is.
Okay. So so sorry. Um let let me explain what I mean. Okay. What I mean are writers who become historical figures, writers who change the course of history.
People like Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Plato. Okay. These are clearly divine prophets who are compelled to be messengers for the monad for the vine. Okay, what you're thinking about is okay, is this guy a bestseller? Is he technically proficient?
That doesn't matter. No one cares about these people. Okay, you may care about these people because they're alive today, but 100 years from now, no one's going to read like like who's who's a famous writer? Uh uh it's me
JK. JK Rowling. No one's going to read JK Rowling 100 years from now. Okay.
Um, so the prophets are determined before uh by God.
Um, yeah. C can someone explain to him how this works? Uh, uh, Anna, can you try? I
think good writers are willing to kind of be a vessel for God's thing. So you are very empty on the inside like yoga right like when you're doing the posture you empty yourself and then these things come to you.
Uh so if you are bad yoga person then you do all your postures and then you
92:48make it look really good you balance your yourself very well but then you are not a channel so then you don't have that divine connection to to write that kind of works that changed the c course of history.
Uh uh do did you want to say something? Uh I think like I think those good writers are just born with a different filter, right? Cuz like you said, our body is is basically a filter to feel to feel the reality and they can choose to they can be like either like wardrobe or or dentist. They can choose like wardro wardro to distort the the celestial order to uh and raise the idiot, right? or they can tr uh choose to be like Dante to to uh convey this like uh divine order to to the secular world.
Yeah.
Okay. Uh uh Bruce,
thank you. Uh I think uh there's so many famous writers, some of writers in America for example like uh uh Hammingway, right? So all of these writers just get through some kind of painful very painful memory like in the war, you know, in the war time. So some some people they've been tortured so much they really want to write something. Okay.
And even the Harry Potter's writer JK Rowling who who just been so poor in poor conditions in this way imagination been so you know so much better than others and he even keep writing on the napkins about what to write and Harry Potter is actually just a jack's childhood. So
Fred did you want to say something? No, I think other than I have to agree with the filter point, but I just think I really agree with that it's about bad writers are people that let their own mind and biases and experience cloud the structure that would have would have come into them.
Yeah. Like Virgil. Yes. good or bad is also I think human
94:49success can be defined by talent, passion and perseverance or this filter. So like some people are born like he said like to be better writers because the their filters are set in a way that they are more likely to have this invitation of divine uh revelation. But then there were also other, you know,
do you guys read the New Yorker magazine? Just the most pretentious crap in this world, okay? They spent decades perfecting their crap. It's beautiful word after word after word, signifying nothing, full sound and theory. Okay?
That's what the New Yorker is. That's what bad writing looks like. Okay. All right. And so you're like, "Well, but I mean like they're successful.
No one cares." Okay. All right. Let's Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
I just hate New Yorker. Let's Let's move on. Sorry.
Um, Kanto 17. Remember, reader, if you've ever been caught in the mountains by a mist through which you only saw as moles see through their skin, how when the thick damp damp vapors once begin to thin, the sun's sphere passes feebly through them. Then your imagination will be quick to reach the point where it can see how it first came to see the sun again when it was almost at that point at which it sets. So my steps matched my master's trusty steps. Out of that cloud I came, reaching the rays that on the shores below by now we're spent.
Oh fantasy that at times would snatch us so from outward things we notice nothing. Although a thousand trumpets sound around us who moves you when the senses do not spur you. A light that finds its form and heaven moves you directly or led downward by God's will. Within my fantasy I saw impressed the savagery the savagery of one who then transformed became the bird that most delights in song. At this my mind withdrew to the within to what imagining might bring.
No thing that came from the without could enter in.
Okay. So again he's having visions now. Okay. These visions just come to him.
96:50There's nothing he can do about it. These are just visions that are sent down to him. Um okay. So so let's look at the visions. Then into my deep fantasy there reigned one who was crucified and as he died he showed his savagery and disdain.
Line 28 around him were great aes and Esther his wife and the just Morsedai Moriceai whose sang and whose doing were so upright. And when this image shattered of itself just like a bubble that has lost the water beneath which it was formed, there then rose up in my envisioning a girl who wept most bitterly and said, "Oh queen, why did you in your wrath desire to be no more so as to keep Levvenia? You killed yourself. Now you have lost me. I am she, mother, who mourns your fall before anothers.
Even asleep is shattered when new light strikes suddenly against closed eyes. And once it's shattered, gleams before it dies completely. So my imagination fell away as soon as light more powerful than light we're accustomed to beat on my eyes. I looked about to see where I might be. But when a voice said, "Hear one can ascend." Then I abandoned every other intent.
That voice made my will my will keen to see the one who' spoken with the eagerness that cannot be still until it faces what it wants. But even as the sun becomes so strong, defeats art vision, veiling its own form, so there my power of sight was overcome. This spirit is divine and though unass he would conduct us to the upward path. He hides himself with that same light he sheds. He does this he does with us as men do with themselves.
For he who sees a need but waits to be asked is already set on cruel refusal. Now let our steps accept his invitation and let us try to climb before dark falls. Then until day returns we'll have to halt. So sat my guide and toward a stairway he and I together turned and just as soon as I was at the first step I sense something much like the motion of a wing and wind that beat against my face and words
98:50pivichi those free of evil anger above us now the final rays before the fall of night were raised to such a height that we could see the stars on every side. Oh why my strength do you so melt away? I said within myself because I felt the force within my legs compelled to halt. We'd reach a point at which the upward stairs no longer climbed and we were halted there just like a ship when it was touched the shore. It has touched the shore.
I listened for a while hoping to hear whatever there might be in this new circle. Then I turned toward my master asking him tell me my gentle father what offense is perched within the cycle circle we have reached. Although our feet must stop, your words need not. And he to me precisely here the love of good that is too tepidly pursued is mended. Here the lazy ore plies harder.
And so that you may understand more clearly. Now turn your mind to me and you will gather some useful fruit from our delaying here. My son, there's no creator and no creature whoever was without love, natural or mental. And you know that he began the natural is always without error but mental love may choose an evil object or earth through too much or too little vigor as long as it's directed toward the first good and tends towards secondary goods with measure it cannot be the cause of evil pleasure but when it twists toward evil or tends to good with more or less care than it should. Those whom he made have worked against their maker.
From this you see that of necessity, love is the seed in you of every virtue virtue and of all acts deserving punishment. Now since love never turns aside its eyes from the well-being of its subject, things are surely free of hatred of themselves. And since no being can be seen as self-existing and divorced from the first being, each creature is cut off from hating him. Thus, if I have distinguished properly, ill love must mean to wish one's neighbor ill. And
100:50this love's born in three ways in your clay. There's he who through a basement of another hopes for supremacy. He only longs to see his neighbors excellence cast down. Then there's one who when he's outdone fears his own loss of fame, power, honor, favor. His sadness loves misfortune for his neighbor.
And there's he who over injury received, resentful for revenge, grows greedy and angrily seeks out another's harm. This three-fold love is expedated here below. Now I would have you understand the love that seeks the good distortedly. Each apprehends confusedly a good in which the mind may rest and longs for it. And thus all strive to reach that good.
But if the love that urges you to know it or to reach that good is lacks, this terrorist after a just repentance punishes for that. There's a different good which does not make men glad. It is not happiness. It's not true as since fruit and root of every good. The love that profle proflegatly yields to that is wept on in three terraces above us.
But I'll not say what three shape that love takes. May you seek those distinctions for yourself.
Okay. So um just like in hell uh Virgil is explain explaining to us how um purgatory is structured. He's saying that that the last three terraces are the three um um terraces of gluttony, lust, and greed. Okay, greed, gluttony, and lust are the last on the top three. And the reason why they're they're on the top three is they are love that is misguided.
Okay, uh greed is a love of power, right? When you should be actually loving God. Uh gluttony is a love of food. And then lust is just um spirious love, random love. Okay.
So it is love that is misguided. Um and they
102:50are the ones which um confuse you. Okay. All right. Uh let's go on to 18. Okay.
Kanto 18. The subtle teacher had completed his discourse to me. Attentively he watched my eyes to see if I seemed satisfied. And I still goated by new thirst was silent without although within I said perhaps I have displeased him of too many questions. But that true father who had recognized the timid want I would not tell aloud by speaking gave me courage to speak out at which I said master my sight is so illumined by your light.
I recognize all that your words declare or analyze. Therefore I pray you gentle father dear to teach me what love is. You have reduced to love both each good and its opposite.
Okay. All right. So this is actually a really important cat. Okay. And I want us to focus on this viral now is going to explain to us what love is.
Why is it love can go astray? Okay. What is good love? What is bad love? Okay.
All right. So, uh let us listen to his explanation.
Line line 16. He said, "Direct your int direct your intellects sharp eyes toward me and let the air of the blind serve as guides be evident to you. The soul which is created quick to love responds to everything that pleases just as soon as beauty wakens it to act. Your apprehension draws an image from a real object and and expands upon that object until soul has turned toward it. And if so turned the soul tends steadfastly, then that propensity is love.
Its nature that joins the soul in you a new through beauty. Then just as flames ascend because the form of fire was fashioned to fly upward toward the stuff of its own sphere where it lasts longest so does the soul when seeds moved into longing emotion of the spirit never resting till the beloved thing has made it joyous. Now you can plainly see how
104:50deeply hidden truth is from scrutinists who would insist that every love is in itself praiseworthy and they're led to error by the matter of love because it may seem always good but not each seal is fine although the wax is. Your speech and my own wit that followed it I answered him have shown me what love is but that has filled me with still greater doubt. For if love's offered to us from without and is the only foot with which soul walks, soul going straight or crooked has no merit. And he to me what reason can see here I can impart. Past that for truth of faith its beatress alone you must await.
Every substantial form at once distinct from matter and conjoined to it and gathers the force that is distinctly distinctively its own. A force unknown to us until it acts. It's never shown except in its effects just as green boughs display the life in plants. And thus man does not know the source of his intelligence of primal notion and his tending toward desires primal objects. Both are a new just as in bees.
There is the honeymaking urge. Such primal will deserves no praise and it deserves no blame. Now that all other longings may conform to this first will, there's in you inborn the power that counsels, keeper of the threshold of your ascent. This is the principle on which your merit may be judged, for it garers and winners good and evil belongings. Those reasoners who reach the roots of things learned of its inborn freedom.
The bequest that thus they left unto the world is ethics. Even if we allow necessity as source for every love that flames in you, the power to curb that love is still your own. This noble power is what Beatrice means by free will. Therefore, remember it if she should ever speak of it to you.
Okay? So again, this is a very important speech. Okay? And this is really the fighting speech um the dividing uh dialogue between Dante and Virgil. Remember how we said that uh at the end
106:50of Infernal, Virgil gave birth to Dante and throughout this process, it was Virgil that was guiding Dante. Well, at this point, uh this dialogue, this debate is going to mark um when Dante and Virgil have their separation. Okay. So, let's figure out why Dante and Virgil, they must separate. So Virgil's saying this, you're walking the streets and sitting uh in the restaurant outside in a terrorist is the most beautiful woman you've ever seen.
If if you're a woman, you're ob obviously the most handsome guy you've seen. Okay. All right. But but but just for the sake of argument, let's let's use beautiful woman. Okay.
For the sake of some simplicity. Um, and what do you want to what do you want to do now? Come on.
Ask her.
Yeah. You you you want to go say hi. Like, hey, how are you? You sit down beside her. Okay.
And um, what what happens next? Okay. What happens next? You're talking to her. You're like, "Hey, how are you?
What a beautiful day." Um, if you're a Virgil, what do you aspire to do?
Possessor.
Yeah. It's you want to possess her, right? If you actually read his speech, he's talking about how what love is, it is your soul expanding outwards to possess another soul of beauty. Okay? You your soul wants to encompass, okay?
Literally dominate, control another person. Okay? And what? So, and so if Virgil wants to possess her, how is Donnie different? What does Donnie want
108:50to do?
Well, what should you do before you praise her? Come on, guys. Have you ever dated? Yes. Yes.
Brad,
learn about her.
Yeah. Get to know her, guys. Okay. Not hard. Ask her, "Hey, where you from?
What do you like to do?" Okay. Right. So what Virgil is saying is that's what love is. Love is basically lust. You see someone beautiful and you want to have her.
Okay. And so what happens if she says you're ugly or I don't like you. What would Virgil do?
Yes.
Put Put her in hell.
Well, yeah, that's what he does ultimately. But what but but what does he do beforehand? um he'll get mad and then he'll make like negative comments on like, "Oh, you're not that good either." Whatever. But
but what what do you do? What What do you do that makes you mad at her?
Cuz she's not praising you back.
What would Virgil do? Okay. Like like you know, they have they have lunch and then Virgil's like, "Wow, you're so beautiful." And then she's like, you know, I'm not that interested in you. What would Virgil do? Come on.
Yes.
Well, he would say like try to introduce a contract of duty between the two. So he said, "I love you so much that you should not do that." Yes.
He'll write a poem like the In I forgot how to pronounce that.
Iniad, something like that. Cuz I think that girl also kind of refused to talk to him, I think. Okay. Okay. Like, no.
Seriously, come on. Come. This is not hard. Okay. Have you guys not dated?
Okay. Yes.
He He'll ask why.
No, he won't. He won't care. What will he do?
You mean No, he won't.
110:51Maybe insult her or something.
Come on.
Maybe he would just walk away.
No. Jimmy, how how do you insist? He will try to reason her out and persuade her.
Oh, guys, come on. How about buy her flowers? How about buy her chocolates? How about buy her a diamond ring? How about buy her a Mercedes?
How about like take her to Monaco for the Grand Prix? How about like, you know, induce her to like Jackie Chan? How about How about buy her a villa, right? How about um take her to the moon? Like you know, right?
He won't stop. And then if he gets rejected, what will he do? He'll put her in hell, man. He'll write the internet and put her in hell. You understand?
That's what literally he will do, right? For like years and years, he will pursue you and you'll be like, "No." And he'll try harder and harder. Okay, that's that's Virgil's conception of love. Tell tell me how Donnie is different. Yes, Edward.
Did Did you Did you want to
try? Um, if he was rejected, he would just continue to love her.
Would he get rejected? Um, Anna,
just getting to know her and praise her and then write poetry for her. And if she rejects him, usually she wouldn't, I guess, because he's so loving. But if she does, then he will continue to love her regardless of her reaction to him. But I love you because I love you. I don't need you to love me back because the true essence of love is let just love.
Like you just flow. And like if you don't love me, that's fine.
Yeah. Yes. Sorry. So, what is your name?
I'm Crystal. And I was trying to make a
112:52similar point. So,
Okay. Thanks, Chris. Okay. All right. What does Virgil want at the end of the day when he's sending her flowers and buying her a diamond ring?
What What's he really want?
Sex.
Yeah. He all he wants is sex, man. Okay. That for him, that's what love is. Okay.
Sex. Does Johnny want sex?
Yes.
Part of it. No, he does not. Okay, guys. Guys. Yes.
I think the answer to the first part, like how he would um seduce her, he basically try and get to know her as long as it took that it was impossible for her to deny that there was another soul present in her presence. Um, but I think that he doesn't want sex because I think it was his love for Beatrice who he couldn't like who he never really had sex with that was like he was thinking how can I love this person so much but I'm not trying to procreate or I'm blocked from procreating because she died young.
Right. Also, um, historically this this is the time of the courty love tradition. Courty love tradition. So you're supposed to like just worship a woman but not possess her. Okay.
from you're supposed to worship her from afar. Usually it's a married woman. Usually it's someone someone you can never ever um have, but you just write poetry in praise of her. Something called a courty love tradition. The tr the tropodors or the provincials in France.
And so Delo who we met previously was part of this troubador tradition. Okay. So um Dante he would not be interested in in the sex. he would think that love is the uh perfect expression of his devotion, of his faith, of his individuality. Okay, does that make sense?
Okay, so these are two ext the center of the whole comedy and that's the Kanto that focuses on free will. And now we get this we don't we
114:55get a lecture on love which doesn't seem symmetrical from paradise or inferno. And so it's like the free will kind of has led into this concept of love the center of the the whole comedy.
Right. Okay. So you're absolutely right. This is actually the very center of the vivine comedy and this is where Dawn and Virgil Okay. It's almost like this is the final battle between the two.
Okay. where heaven and hell meet and don obviously represents heaven and Virgil represents hell. This is world the cosmos and they're going to discuss what love is. Okay, so you're absolutely right. This is crucial structurally and they discuss what love is and we've already distinguished that Virgil sees love as the expression of your uh ego and you you want to dominate the other person.
you want to possess the other person. Whereas for Dante, love is about giving. Okay? And and this is very clear when we we reach paradise. Okay?
So this is where he he h heaven and hell meet, right? This is the final battle between the between the two. And this is where they will ultimately separate and go their separate ways. Um how does Virgil define free will here? What is free will?
You see this beautiful woman, you talk to her, you buy her flowers, you buy her diamond ring, you give her like money, and all you want to is is have sex with her. What is free will in Virgil's understanding of things? That you're free to do whatever you want. So, it doesn't really matter what she wants or what she wants to do that you have the freedom to pursue her as much as you like and follow what you want as much as you.
What is good and evil here? Uh Francois,
well for Virgil is having what he wants and for Dante is wanting what he wants. C
can you explain what the difference?
So for example like Virgil because he wants something free will be having it.
116:57Uh even though like a lot of things make it impossible whereas Dante it's just I think of it and even though it doesn't reach that point just the fact of I'm free to think and free to imagine having it.
Okay. Yeah. That that that's that that that's right. Yes. Okay.
Does someone want to expand on that? Uh Edward, did you did you want to say something? Okay. For for Virgil, what is good and evil then? For for Virgil, what is good and evil?
Yes. Uh no J um
uh good and evil. I I really like Branch's comment on uh having versus wanting. I think that's that is mindblow. Uh it's it really leads uh guides my imagination. I think for for Virgil is having uh evil is having the wrong things, good is having the right things.
For Dante uh good is wanting the right things and evil is wanting the wrong things.
Right. Yes. Okay.
Okay. Uh Anna,
I feel like for Virgil, like what's good is confirming to his will. Uh and what's bad is what's refusing his ego's manifestation. So if the woman refuses him, then she he condemns her to hell ultimately. So it's not about whether the women's choice was right or wrong, but the fact that she rejected him.
No. No. That's not that that's not how how Virgil will proceed. Okay? Because remember we have to think that Virgil is a real person with real ideas.
Okay, you just say it to yourself. That doesn't really make sense. Okay, for Virgil, what is good and evil is um love and this is really important. Okay, love is neither good or evil. If love takes you to a good place and you allow good to take you that that place, that's good.
But if love takes you into an evil place, you have to reject love. Then that's what's good.
118:58You understand? That's what free will is. Free will is to deny yourself when you know the thing is wrong. Okay. How does this conflict with Virgil then?
Oh, sorry. How does this conflict with Dante? Because Virgil says love is neutral. Love can be good or bad. Free will is to know the difference and to act accordingly.
Right? What would Donnie say? Come on. We we we read paradise. We we know what what Donnie says.
Yes. It's like follow your heart.
Good can never be evil. Sorry. Love can never be evil. Love is always good. Okay.
Then then then then then how to explain when you see this beautiful woman and like you love her so much you want to give your life to her. How how how to explain this?
Dante doesn't call misguided love.
It's not love. It's lust. You understand? If you see this woman, you want to have sex with her. That's not love.
That's lust. Okay. Love is giving yourself. Love is hoping the best for her, right? It's like, "How can I help you?
How can I be your friend? How can I support you?" That's what love is. It's not like I want to have sex with you. That's just what lust is. Okay?
And Virgil does not know the difference. Whereas Donnie does know the difference. That's why Dante's stuck in limbo and why Virgil stuck in in limbo and D's going to heaven. That's the difference. This is where they separate.
Okay. All right. Okay. Is that clear, guys? Uh, yes.
I still don't understand why this argument is even happening when when
120:58when Virgil knows the truth, right? He knows the truth about everything because he's a prophet, so a poet or prophet. So why why are they arguing when when when Virgil should know the truth and he doesn't have any obstacle to not speak the truth about love that he should know to Dante. Okay. So again this goes back to the idea of absolute will and contingent will.
Okay. Absolute will is what your soul is. Okay. Contingent will is what you choose to do. So Virgil knows the absolute truth of the universe but he's made certain choices that has clouded his understanding of things.
Okay. So he is a poet. He knows the complete truth of the universe but he chose to write the iniad to serve empire and so that's going to cloud his understanding of the way things work. Right? Once you make an action you have to justify this action.
Does that make sense? Right? Once you make this action you have to be like this is a red action. You can't be like, "Oh, it's it was it was a mistake." So once you make this action and you now have to go justify it by changing your worldview. Okay?
So even though he knows the absolute truth, he needs to make certain adjustments to this theory in order to make his actions make sense to him, right? So he knows that love is giving yourself. But then like why did you write this the poem the Iniad and why did you let I guess let you censor it and you know better, right? And you're like, well, okay, it's and so what what you do is rather than just say I'm wrong, you change your worldview. Does that make sense?
Okay.
So, he's he's weighed down by his past actions that he can't he's not able to change himself.
And that's what sin is, right?
Sin is you are weighed down by your actions and you refuse to forgive yourself. And so, you just you just you just you just basically uh put yourself in hell for all of eternity. Okay, doesn't make sense. Vers problem is he
123:01refuses to admit he's wrong. He would rather forget. He would rather just burn in hell than to admit, you know what? I was wrong to write the ad. Okay.
All right, guys. So, so we'll take a break. We'll come back uh at lunch after lunch. Okay. Uh welcome back.
Good afternoon. So to start we have a special pres presentation from Francois and um he's going to talk about how he perceives um how memory works. Okay. So um uh Francois.
Yeah. Uh hello everyone. So I was just like looking at Jang's work and how he represent represented things and uh it was really messy and uh it seems like you were channeling the wrong guy I feel like.
Right.
Uh so yeah basically did this this map on the right. So this was like our discussion before about psychology. Uh so it is still like quite vague but you understand the most of it. And on the right so um there's a big like circle where there's a source in the middle which is the monad. So like energy and all and so it sparks like it's very v vibrant from the middle and then it extends into some very flat um circle.
And so how I look at it is that on the exterior it's more about uh present material and ego. And so if your consciousness is directed like in this realm then you'll think about like money, time, house, material objects about yourself etc. And like depending on situations and moments in your life then your consciousness is more directed in the center where you like think more of low love, hope and family and like etc. It's just like um a whole idea and uh also I saw something of like who is it Rubert Sheldrake?
Yes. Yes. He is a physicist. Yes. Can you explain his theory?
So basically I saw something about morphic resonance where there is some patterns and if people start thinking in
125:03a way I think there's like a pattern and people like diverge into this kind of consciousness. So I feel like and so I feel like in today's world there is like incuring a converging point into like the exterior realm media polics and AI where our consciousness is directed into thinking about uh money time fear etc. Whereas I see the divine comedy as more directing us into the center of this uh consciousness. And so just like a point I made like think of this. I feel like angels are more meant to push us inward and demons outward in a way.
And I think it's really movable. So depending on the moment in your life and uh during the day your consciousness just like moves around there.
Yeah. Okay. Great. So um a few points. First of all um this is great by the way.
This is fantastic. Um but my first point is remember yesterday professor Brahmer told us that uh William James uh he believed goals actually exist but they were really boring. Okay they not actually have much consciousness and this is something that we experience in divine harmony as well where there are angels and demons but they don't really do anything. Okay but the thing is like they're all around us and and this is what what what the theory is like like we're surrounded always by these angels and demons who are torn in different directions. Okay, that's the first part.
Second point is that Rudolph Selj is really interesting. So if you have a chance, please watch his interviews, his presentations um online. But but to show but to prove a point I I'll do an experiment. Okay. So first of all, can you can you face the uh screen?
Okay. You're going to face the screen. Okay. And then and then I'm going to have um Edward come and what Yes. No.
No. No. No. Send behind him. Send behind him.
Okay. Okay. And send behind him. All right. So, I want you to turn away from him.
Okay. All right. So, we're going to see Okay. We'll do an experiment, okay? Where Edward's going to turn around and
127:06look at uh Francois. Okay. And Fran, could you please close your eyes? Okay. Okay.
So, obviously, if Francois turns around um before Edward turns around, then Francois loses against this game. Okay. Right. So, we're trying to figure out how long it will take for uh everyone's going to turn around. Okay.
And when everyone turns around, I I want to I want us to count how long it takes for Francois to turn around. Okay? And remember, if France turns around first and he obviously loses, okay? Does that does it make sense, guys? This is just an experiment, okay?
It's not a test. Um but uh let's start. Okay. On three. And again, it's entirely Edward's choice.
We're going to turn around. He could choose not to turn around if if he wants to. I mean, he we could be here for another two hours. Okay. But but but we're we're going to count how long it takes silently for France to turn around when Edward turns around.
Okay. All right. So, let's start. 1 2 3 go. Wow.
You guys see that? That was pretty fast, man. Thank you. Thank you both. Okay.
You see that? You guys saw that? So, Francois, how do you how do you how did you know?
129:06C can you can you big like we waited a long time. I was getting impatient. I was like, "What's going on here, man?"
Just through like So, I was focusing on my respiration and I felt there was a moment I was like in control of the situation. I felt it was the right moment.
Okay. That was pretty that was pretty fast, right? I I was I was impressed because like I think it was like less than 2 seconds like like how long was it? Yeah. And like Edward was being sneaky about it too, right?
He was like, I'm going to trick him and like were you surprised, right? So, this is actually what Rubert Cedric does. He does this sort of research and he's trying to figure out how this happens like like how how does this happen, right? If you use standard neuroscience, it gets you nowhere, right? Uh but um if you believe though that we actually exist in different dimensions and we have uh morphic fields.
Okay. So so basically we project outwards and so this sort of stuff is possible but also you think about it telepathy telekinesis is also possible to a certain degree. Okay. Um and this is something we'll we'll discuss as we continue divine comedy. Now where our souls are, our souls are essentially these morphic fields.
Okay. And so when Edward is turning around and staring at friends, our friends are turning around because there's a connection at the soul level. Okay. And that's why the reaction is so fast. Weird, right?
Okay. Well, there you go. All right. Let's continue the vine comedy. Have you guys not seen this before?
Yeah. Again, like the point is there's so much interesting stuff out there, but we close our minds to it, right? We we have these prejudices about how the world works, and so we shut up our minds to
131:07these possibilities. What's your impression of that? I knew that.
But like but like when we saw it happen, weren't you kind of like shocked?
Yeah, it was kind of shocking, right? Because like I knew it happened, too, but like I didn't know it would happen that instantly, right? That fast. Were you surprised?
Yeah.
As I always said,
also you put us all in tune.
Yes.
You put us all in tune. We've been doing this for 10 11 days.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh, excuse me.
No, just Yeah, I waited a long time. Uh,
yeah, you did. I was getting I was like, why man?
So, I'd waited so long. So, I thought when I finally turned around, you know, it might take him a while then to turn around.
Yeah. Yeah.
And then he basically as soon as I turned around, looked at him, he turned around.
Yeah. Yeah. It happens pretty fast. Okay. All right, guys.
Let's let's let's continue Divine Comedy. Okay. Um, Kanto 18, line 76. The moon with midnight now behind us made the star seem scarer to us, scarcer to us. It was shaped just like a copper basin, gleaming new and countercourse.
It crossed those paths the sun ignites when those in Rome can see it set between the Corsicans and the Sardinians. That gracious shade for whom Pollola, one more renowned than any Manchu in town, had freed me from the weight of doubt I bore, so that I, having harvested his clear and open answers to my question, stood like one who, nearing sleep, has random visions. But readiness for sleep was suddenly taken from me by people who behind our bags backs already turned in our direction. Just as of old isminus and esopus at night along their banks saw crowds and clamor whenever theans had to summon bakas. Such was the arching crowd
133:09that curved around that circle driven on as I made out by righteous will as well as by just love. Soon all that mighty throng drew near us, for they ran and ran, and two in front of them who wept were crying. In her journey, Mary made haste to reach the mountain, and in order to conquer Larida, for Caesar thrust against Moxay, and then to Spain, he rushed. Following them, the others cried, "Quick, quick, lest time be lost through an insufficient love. Where urged for good is keen, grace finds new green.
Oh people in whom eager fervor now may compensate for sloth and negligence he showed in doing good half-heartedly. He whose alive and surely I don't lie to you would climb above as soon as he has seen the sunshed light on us again. Then tell us where the passage lies at hand. My guide said this. One of the souls replied, "Come follow us and you will find the gap.
We're so fully anxious to advance, we cannot halt. And do forgive us should you take our penance for discourtesy. I was St. Zenos Abbott and Verona under the rule of valiant Barbarasa of whom Alain still speaks with so much sorrow and there's one with one foot in the grave who soon will weep over that monastery lamenting that he once had power there because in place of its true shepherd he put one who was unsound of body and still more of mind and born in sin his son I don't know if he had said more or was silent he had already raised so bar far beyond us but I heard heard this much and was pleased to hear it. And he who was my help in every need said, "Turn around.
See those two coming? They whose words mock sloth." And I heard those two say behind all of the rest. The ones for whom the sea parted were dead before the Jordan saw those who had inherited its lands. And those who did not suffer trials until the end together with Anaciz's son gave themselves up to life without renown. Then when those shades were so
135:10far off from us that seeing them became impossible, a new thought rose inside me and from that from that thought till others many and diverse were born. I was so drawn from random thought to thought that wandering in mind I shut my eyes transforming thought on thought to dream.
So a new thought rose inside of me and it kept on going. Okay. So that's what happens as you become much more virtuous. you become much more connected to the divine consciousness and more and more uh visions are downloaded into you. Okay, that's a process at work.
All right, let's keep on going. KTO 19. In that hour when the heat of day defeated by earth and sometimes Saturn can no longer warm up the moon sent cold. When geommancers can in the east see their fortuna major rising before the dawn along a path that will be darkened for it only briefly. A stammering woman came to me in dream.
Her eyes skew and crooked on her feet. Her hands were crippled. Her complexion salow. I looked at her and just as sun revives cold limbs that night made numb. So did my gaze loosen her tongue, and then in little time set her contorted limbs in perfect order, and with the coloring that love prefers, my eyes transformed the wness of her features.
And when her speech had set free, then she began to sing so that it would have been most difficult for me to turn aside. I am, she sang, I am the pleasing siren who in midse mariners astray. There's so much delight in hearing me. I turned aside Ulyses, although he had longed to journey, who gross youth to me seldom departs, I satisfy him so. Her lips were not yet done, when there beside me a woman showed herself, alert and saintly, to cast the siren into much
137:10confusion. Oh, Virgil, Virgil, tell me, who is this? She asked most scornfully, and he came forward, his eyes intent upon that honest one. He sees the other bearing her in front, tearing her clothes and showing me her belly. The stench that came from there awakened me.
I moved my eyes and my good master cried, "At least three times I've called you. Rise and come. Let's find the opening where you may enter."
Okay. All right. So, this is another dream. Okay. So, again, as Virgil is kind of up higher, more and more visions come to him.
And this is a very strange dream, right? Because Donnie is being seduced by the siren, right? Right. The sign who seduced Ulisses. And then a woman barges in and shouts, "Oh, Virgil, Virgil, tell me who is this?" And then Virgil comes forward and then he seizes the siren um and tears her clothes apart.
What What's going on here? Okay, let's try to figure out what this dream is about. Remember the last dream that um Donna had was a vision from heaven uh where say Lucia uh as an eagle picks him up and delivers him to the gates of purgatory. What is going on here? And again again I don't know the answer.
It's all interpretation, right? It's all speculation. So can someone tell me what is going on here? What is this dream about in our understanding of the divine comedy? Who is the siren?
Do you mean? Uh, okay. Yeah, I I know the siren is a woman, but I'm saying like so far in our
139:10story, who should be the who should be the siren? Yeah, it's Virgil, right? Okay. So, if we think if we see this, we think it's maybe it's Virgil because Virgil is the one seducing Donnie throughout, right? Uh with his poetry.
Uh and throughout all this time, Dante has been a student, a child of Virgil's, right? So, it seems as though it sounds like Virgil is the one seducing Dante and leading him astray, but then something weird happens. Beatrice comes in. I think it's Beatric, you know, maybe it's Beatric. She's like, "Virgil, Virgil, tell me who is this?
Where's Dante here?" Yes. when Virgil comes forward, he's behind Dante. So, um, because he's barring her in front, it's almost like he's hiding herself. And I think that when he's showing Dante her belly, it's a message from Beatric saying like, you are, please don't get still born in Virgil such that you would start to rot as a baby. um that the siren is like a love that has been left to fester and that's why it wake that's why it smells.
Okay, that's really interesting. Okay, but first answering this question um what should Beatric be really saying? What should what should Beatric be saying to me? No, no. So, so it seems as though Don is being seduced, right?
Beatress comes in and what she should be saying rather than, "Oh, Virgil, Virgil, tell me who is this
141:15and be like, she'll probably be like,
she is pissed right now when she asked scornfully."
Yeah.
But what is strange or paradoxical about what she's saying? Because Virgil should be the siren. But now there's another siren.
Yeah. Why sound to Virgil? She should be talking to Dante, right? It's Donn's dream. Beatric is Donnie's beloved, right?
This is a dream. D So, so visualize this. Dante is staring at a siren. He's being seduced by the siren. C.
Can you explain? So, in this dream, Dante is Virgil.
Yeah. And and and why is this a problem?
What does this tell tell Dante?
It's a Clarion call that he's gone too far in his bond with Virgil.
Okay. Yes. Anyone else? Yes. I think in the moment when you have to kill your father as a man or or whatever the case may be.
Um that final moment is when you realize your greatest affinity with the father. So you're thinking these are the things that make me like him. This is how I am him
and and you use him as a final projection. You say all right I'm him now I'm gonna it's over.
Yeah. Have you guys watched Star Wars?
Right. You you I I know you watch Star Wars,
but you remember the scene where um is it is it episode 2? Um but but you know like
like Luke has to kill his father, right? So he kills someone, he discovers it's his father.
Yeah.
Right. When it opens it, it's it's like himself, right?
Okay. So it's playing to that idea. It doesn't make sense, guys. Okay. So, so that conversation that that dialogue between Dante and Virgil, it's a turning point now because it sounds correct, but
143:16there's a part to it that Dante knows it's not correct. Okay? And now his connection to the divine is giving him images to show him it's not correct. In fact, the universe is now warning him, be aware of Virgil. You are now Virgil.
Right? Okay. Does that make sense, guys? Yes.
It's especially because after it's right after um Virgil delivered his speech about love and so Dante's almost like inhibiting his worldview to his right. So he's like becoming Virgil in that aspect and especially like understanding love is like the most important thing for Dante that he gets it right.
Yes. Exactly. Yes. Thank you. Okay.
All right. But but you see how like once you connect the vine, the vine will steer you in the right direction. Do you do you understand? Like what's important is to connect yourself to the vine through love. Once once that happens, the vine will give you messages to show you the way even though you you may yourself may be corrupted.
All right, let's keep on going. Does anyone else want to add something to the stream? Because again, this is a very complex stream. Okay, I don't I don't want to oversimplify it. Yes.
Um, I think it's quite telling that Betus Betrice asked Virgil to identify the siren because it's kind of the love that we were talking about that Virgil has that turns
uh the ugly lady into a beautiful one. That
the idea that he could possess her makes her beautiful when in fact it's she's like salow and and ugly and malformed.
Um, yeah. Anna
yeah it also makes me think about this whole idea in the Greek tradition that the first two or three gods like before Zeus they were all father killing so this idea of almost epitus theory like you have to kill your father to become
145:17yourself it's also the turning point like past 16 right like halfway through uh purgatory that now your first half of your life is childhood you're imitating your dad and you know you want to be him or you battle him a little bit in teenage you know when you're teen teenager and then finally I guess maybe this is the turning point in which he becomes adulthood which is killing of one's father.
Okay. Um the other thing I will point out is like how the universe talks to you is through images that evoke emotions. Do you understand? Right. The images don't really mean that much.
The images are meant to convey emotion to to like provoke an emotion in you that lead you to the correct path. So, um I mean what I think my interpretation is this, okay? Uh if I'm Dante, I see this dream and I'm extremely uncomfortable. I'm extremely uh anxious. And the reason why is I feel as though Beatatrice and Virgil might become one with each other.
Does that make sense? Because it's Virgil who goes and does Beatus bidding. Okay. So, so it's one of like Virgil is my competitor now. You understand?
That's the emotion now. Before it's like Virgil's my father. Now he's like no, no, no, no. Virgil is my competitor. I I need to watch out.
I mean like if I really want to keep Beatric, I need to show I am more worthy than Virgil that I am more willing to do sacrifice myself for Beatatric.
Yeah. Which in a way is very adep complex too, right? Leoian concept is that the first few years of your life the little boy wants to imitate the father and after that he's like, "Oh, he's a competitor to my mom, you know, for me, so I have to kill him." So it's
Right. Okay. But you see how how with Dante just a few lines are so rich,
147:20right? They're so pregnant. You can go on and on and try to analyze what's going on, but there's so many different layers, right? Okay. So, I think, you know, again, the what's causing this dream is Virgil's exposition of love, right?
And Don Hart knows, no, no, no, this is this doesn't make any sense, but he doesn't know why it doesn't make any sense because he's not mature enough, right? So the universe gives him these dreams that reveal to him Virgil is your competitor. Okay. Be wary of what he just said. Okay.
Does it make sense, guys? Okay. All right. Let's keep on going.
37. I rose. The daylight had already filled the circles of the sacred mountain. We were journeying with new sun at our back. I followed him, bearing my brow like one whose thoughts have weighed him down, who bends as if he were this semiarchch that forms a bridge.
And then I heard, "Draw near, the passes here," said in a manner so benign and gentle, as in our mortal land one cannot hear. He who addressed us so had open wings, white as the swans, and he directed us upward between two walls of the hard rock. And then he moved his plumes and fanning us affirmed that those que lugent would be blessed, their souls would be possessed of consolation. "What makes you keep your eyes upon the ground?" And my g my guide began to say to me when both of us had climbed a little past the angel and I what makes me moved with such misgiving is a new vision. It has so beguiled me that I cannot relinquish thoughts of it.
Okay. So again this vision has unsettled Dante. Now he's forced to come to terms with both the emotion and the vision. Okay. Keep on going.
The one you saw he said that ancient witch for her alone one must atone above. You saw how man can free himself from her. Let that suffice and hurry on your way. Fasten your eyes upon the lure that spun by the eternal king with his great spheres. Just like a falcon who at first looks down, then when the falconer has called, bends forward, craving the food that's ready for him there.
So I
149:21became, and so remained until through the cleft rock that lets one climb above, I reached the point at which the circle starts. When I was in the clearing, the fifth level, my eyes discovered people there who wept lying upon the ground, all turned face down. Mento animea animameha I heard them say with size so deep that it was hard to comprehend the words they spoke. Oh God's elect whose sufferings both hope and justice make less difficult. Direct us to the stairway meant for our scent.
If you come here but do not need to be prostrate and you would find the path most quickly then keep your right hand always to the outside. So did the poet as so did reply come from a little way ahead. And I hearing that voice reply learned what was hidden. I turned my eyes to find my master's eyes. At this, with a glad sign, he ratified what I had asked for with my eager eyes.
When free to do as I had wanted to, I moved ahead and bent over that soul whose words before had made me notice him, saying, "Spirit, with them whom weeping ripens, that without which there's no return to God, suspend a while for me your greater care. Tell me, who were you and why are your backs turned up? And there were I alive said out, would you have me beseech them good for you?" and heed to me. Why heaven turns our backs against itself, you are to know. But first, she is quote egoy successor Petri.
Between Cestria and Kio descends a handsome river, and its name is set upon the upper portion of my crest. For one month, and a little more I learned how the great mantle weighs on him who'd keep it out of the mire. All other weight seemed feathers. Alas, how tardy my conversion was. But when I had been been named the Roman shepherd, then I discovered the deceit of life.
I saw that there the heart was not at rest, nor could I in that life ascend more high, so that in me love for this life was kindled. Until that point I was a squalid soul, for God divided holy averages. Now, as you see, I'm punished here for that. When axis here
151:22declared as the purggation of converted souls, the mountain has no punishment more bitter. Just as we did not lift our eyes on high, but set our sight on earthly things instead, so justice here impels our eyes toward earth. As a love of any other good, and thus we lost our chance for righteous works, so justice here fetterss our hands and feet and holds us captive. And for as long as it may please our just Lord, here will be outstretched and motionless.
Okay, so they are now in a terrorist of greed or avarice. And they're talking to Pope Adrien who said that um as Pope he was extremely ambitious. He did whatever he could to climb the ladder of power. And uh now um after he repented he is he is forced to basically uh lie on the ground to to focus on the present to focus on um on Lur himself. Okay.
All right. Keep on going. Line 127. I'd kneel, wishing to speak, but just as I began, and through my voice alone, he sensed that I had meant to do him reverence. What reason makes you bend your body so he said, and I to him, your dignity made conscience sting me as I stood erect.
Brother, straighten your legs, rise up, he answered. Don't be mistaken. I, with you and others, am but a fellow servant of one power. If you have ever understood the holy sound of the gospel that says, Make quent. Then you will see why I have spoken so.
Now go your way. I'd not have you stop longer. Your staying here disturbs my lamentations. The tears that help me ripe in what you mentioned. Beyond.
I have a niece whose name Elijah. She in herself is good as long as our house by example brings her not to evil. And she alone is left to me beyond.
Okay. All right. Let's keep on going. Okay.
153:27KTO 20 against a better will the will fights weakly. Therefore, to please him, though against my pleasure, I drew my unquenched sponge out of the water. I moved on, and my guide moved through the unencumbered space, hugging the rock, as one walks on a wall close to the battlements. For those whose eyes would melt down drop by drop, the evil that possesses all the world were too close to the edge on the far side. May you be damned, oh ancient wolf, whose power can claim more prey than all the other beasts.
Your hungering is steep and ever ending. Oh heavens, through whose revolutions many think things on earth are changed. When will he come? The one whose works will drive that wolf away. Our steps were short and slow as we moved on.
I was attentive to the shades. I heard the sorrow in their tears and lamentations. Then I by chance heard one ahead of us crying in his lament, "Sweet Mary, as a woman without crying in labor pains," and he continued, "In that hostel where you had set down your holy burden, there one could discover just how poor you were." Following this, I heard, "Oh good, Fabricius, you ch you chose as your possessions indigence with virtue rather than much wealth with vice. These words have been so pleasing to me, I moved forward so that I might come to know the spirit from whom they had seemed to come." He kept on speaking, telling the laress of Nicholas the gifts he gave the maiden so that they might be honorably wed. Oh soul who speaks of so much righteousness, do tell me who you were, I said, and why just you alone renew these seemly praises.
You're speaking to me will not go unth than when I return to finish the short span of that life which now hurries toward its end. And he I'll tell you, not because I hope for for solace from your world, but for such grace as shines in you before your deaths arrived. I was the root of the obnoxious plant that overshadows all the Christian land so that the fine fruit can rarely rise from the
Okay, so this his name is Hugh Kapad and he is the founder of the current dynasty of the Holy Roman Empire. Okay, so his family now controls the Holy R woman Roman Empire. As we know, the Holy Roman
155:27Empire is at war with the Vatican, and this is calling causing all sorts of chaos throughout the uh the world. So, he's the root of that obnoxious family that is now overshadowing all Christian lands. Okay. And his name is Hugh Capat. Okay.
All right. Line 46. But it but if Dai and Leela and Brush and Glint have had power, they would soon take vengeance on it. And this I beg of him who judges all. The name I bore beyond was Hugh Cape.
Of me was born the Louise and Phillips by whom France has been ruled most recently. I was the son of a Parisian butcher when all the line of ancient kings was done and only one am a monk and gray survived. I found the reigns that ruled the kingdom tight within my hands. And I held so much new gained power and possessed so many friends that to the widowed crown my own son's head was elevated. And from him began the consecrated bones of all those kings until the giant dowry of Provence removed all sense of shame within my house.
My line was not worth much but did no wrong. There its rapine began with lies and force and then it seized that it might make men. Pontier and Norman Normandy and Gaskanany. Charles came to Italy and for amends made Corardin a victim and then thrust back Thomas into heaven for amends. I see a time not too far off in which another Charles advances out of France to make himself and his descendants famous.
He does not carry weapons when he comes, only the lands that Judas tilted. This he couches so he twists the punch of Florence. From this he'll gain not land just shame and sin which will be all the heavier for him as he would reckon lightly such disgrace. The other who once left his ship as prisoner I see him sell his daughter bargaining his pirates haggle over female slaves. Oh Alas, my house is now your captive.
It traffics in the flesh of it of its own children.
157:27What more is left for you to do to us? That past and future evil may seem less. I see the flirt enter an Anani and his vicor Christ made prisoner. I see him mock a second time. I see the vinegar and g renewed and he slain between two sleeves who are still alive.
And I see the new p pilot one so cruel that still not say that he without decree carries his greedy sails into the temple. Oh you my Lord, when will you let me be happy on seeing vengeance that concealed make sweet your anger in your secrecy? What have I said about the only bride the Holy Ghost has known? The words that made you turn to me for commentary. These words serves as answer to our prayers as long as it is day.
But when night falls when we recite examples that are contrary. Then we tell over how Pyon out of his greedy lust for gold became a thief and traitor and a parasite. The wretchedness of Aarish's Midas resulting from his ravenous request. The consequence that always makes men laugh. And each of us recalls the foolish Aiken how he had robbed the spoil so that the anger of Joshua still seems to sting him here.
Then we accuse Sapphira and her husband. We praise the cigodoras suffered and Palm who killed Polydoris. Polydoris resounds an infamy around all this mountain. And finally, what we cry here is crasses tell us because you know how does gold taste. At times one speaks aloud another low according to the sentiment that goats us now to be more swift and now more slow.
Thus I was not alone in speaking of the good we sight by day. But here nearby no other spirit raised his voice as high. We had already taken leave of him and were already struggling to advance along that road as far as we were able. when I could feel the mountain tremble like a failing thing, at which a chill seized me as cold grips one who goes to meet his death. Do had surely not been buffeted
159:27so hard before Lana planted there the nest in which to bear to bear the skies to your eyes. Then such a shout rose up on every side that drawing near to me my master said, "Don't be afraid as long as I'm your guide." Gloria in a shel in a shel's day. Oh, they all cried. So did I understand from those nearby whose shouted words were able to be heard. Just like the shepherds who first heard that song, we stood but did not move in expectation until the trembling stopped and the song was done.
Then we took up again our holy path watching the shades who lay along the ground who had resumed their customary tears. My ignorance has never struggled so has never made me long so much to know if memory does not mislead me now as it seemed then long within my thoughts nor did I dare to ask. We were so rushed nor by myself could I discern the cause so timid pensive I pursued my way.
Okay so two points. The first point is that again there's a lot of symmetry in Dante. So this mirrors the um um in paradise where Peter the first pope he lambasts he criticizes Catholic Church right well the founder of the current Holy Roman Empire Hukabad um criticizes his own family and demands divine justice divine retribution for all their crimes. Second point is like um as they're climbing up the mountain there's an earthquake. Okay, it shakes.
The reason why the mountain does that is whenever soul completes his uh pgation that soul is aditted into heaven and the the universe celebrates by with with a earthquake. Okay. To to signify that a soul has been released and will now ascend to heaven. Okay. And uh in next count we will meet the soul.
And I want you to pay careful attention to how the soul interacts with
161:29Virgil because his soul his name is Statius. Okay. Statius. So um the symmetry. Okay.
So remember before uh Don Virgil met Sudello. Okay. This is Virgil. So Delo is a trodor uh which is say he is a love he's a poet of the courtly love tradition and he was living around the time of Dante okay maybe the 13th century okay so do you remember when Virgil met with Sodello what it was like yeah they were from the same place what else okay and so that bow before Virgil right and how did Virgil feel about all this? He was ecstatic, right?
He was ecstatic. Okay. And now what's going to happen is this. Virgil is going to meet Statius. And Statius is he is a Latin poet.
Okay, a Latin epic poet very similar to Virgil. Okay. And Status worships Virgil. And how does Virgil feel about this? What what would you guess?
Yeah, he'd be very he'd be happy as well, right? Well, if Sord Delo worship Virgil, you would think another poet woring Virgil Virgil would have the same reaction, but it's the opposite reaction. Okay. He is not happy about about this. Okay.
So, so let's read count 21. Okay.
KTO 21. The natural thirst that never can be quenched except by water that gives grace. The drop that the simple women of Samaria sought tormented me. Haye spurred me on the path crowded with souls behind my guide and I felt pity though their pain was justified. And here even as Luke records for us that
163:29Christ knew risen from his burial cave appeared to along his way a shade appeared and he advanced behind our bags while we were careful not to trample on the outstretched crowd. We did not notice him until he had addressed us with, "God give you, oh my brother's peace." We turned at once, then after offering suitable response, Virgil began, "And may that just tribunal which has consigned me to eternal exile place you in peace within the blessed assembly." "What?" he excla exclaimed as we moved forward quickly. "If God's not deemed you worthy of ascent, who's guided you so far along his stairs?" If you observe the signs the angel traced upon this man, my teacher said, you'll see plainly he's meant to reign with all the right righteous. But since she who spins night and day, had not yet spun this bool that clo sets upon the daffin and adjusts for everyone, his soul, the sister of your soul and mine in its ascent, could not alone have climbed here, for it does not see the way we see. Therefore, I was brought forth from hell's broad jaws to guide him in his going.
I shall lead him just as far as where I teach can reach. But tell me, if you can, why just before the mountain shook and shout at all of it, for so it seemed down to its sea bathed shore. His question threaded so the needle's eye of my desire that just the hope alone of knowing left my thirst more satisfied. The other shade began. The sanctity of these slopes does not suffer anything that's without order or uncustomary.
This place is free from every perturbation what heaven from itself and in itself receives may serve us cause here nothing else. Therefore no rain nor hail, no snow, no due, no horrost falls here any higher than the stairs of entry with their three brief steps. Neither thick clouds nor thin appear, nor flash of lightning. Thus's daughter, who so often shifts places in our world, is absent here. dry vapor cannot climb up any higher than to the top of the three steps of which I spoke where Peter's vicor plants his feet below that point there may be smaller
165:29ample tremors but here above I know not why no wind concealed in earth has ever caused a tremor for it only trembles here when some soul feels its cleanse so that it rises or stirs to climb on high and that shout follows the will alone is proof of purity and fully free surprise aes soul into a chain change of dwelling place effectively. Soul had the will to climb before, but that will was opposed by longing to do penance as once to sin instilled by divine justice. And I who have lain in this suffering 500 years and more just now have felt my free will for a better threshold.
Okay, stop. Okay. Um, why are souls being punished in purgatory? So had the will to climb before, but that will was opposed by longitude penance instilled by divine justice. Why are souls suffering in purgatory?
What do these three lines mean? Anyone?
Uh Fred? Um, I think it's to test whether their mindset is true and whether their mindset is different from those in hell and that it's changed.
Okay, read the lines to yourself. Okay, and tell me try to paraphrase paraphrase these lines. Okay, uh, Anna,
I said they had the will to climb before, but that will was supposed by longing to do penance. That means they want to climb but it's not wanting to do penance. So that's why it's
Nope. Nope. What does he mean here? Why are they being punished?
Yes.
Well, they have to cleanse themselves of their sin because their sin, the weight of the sin is weighing them down to
167:29climb further.
Why do they have to do that though?
Well, if they don't cleanse themselves, then they can't advance, right? It says who?
You yourself.
Excuse me?
Yourself.
Yourself. Do you understand the idea here?
What this is saying is this. Yes, we have the desire to climb, but we also want want to make ourselves worthy of God. It's not God punishing us. It's we're punishing ourselves to make ourselves worthy of God. We are cleansing ourselves of our sins by doing penance.
Do you understand this idea of complete free will? No one's making you do these punishments. You want to these these punishments because they make you a better person. And when you face God, you want to be the best person possible. You don't want any doubt.
You don't want to have any sin in you. Okay? I mean like it's like going to the prom and like you know dressing up really really nicely. Okay? You want to be the you want to be your best and that's why you do penance.
That's why you that's why you suffer. Okay? Keep on going. 70 Thus you heard the earthquake and the high spirits throughout the mountain as they praise the Lord. And may he send them speedily upward.
So he so did he speak to us. And just as joy is greater when we quench a greater thirst, the joy he brought cannot be told in words. And my wise guide, I now can see the net impeding you. How one slips through and wide quakes here. And what makes you all rejoice.
And now may it please you to tell me who you were in your words. May I find why you've lain here for so many centuries?
Okay, stop. Okay, so so keep this in mind. Okay, this guy has been doing this crap for 500 years every single day for 500 years. And now he's completed his mission. So he is the happiest soul in the universe at this moment.
And he cannot wait to go meet God. Okay. All he wants is go meet God. He sees Don and Virgo like, "Hey guys, get out of the way, man. I'm I'm going to go to God.
169:29Okay. So that this is his mental state. This is this is his emotional state. Okay. Keep keep on going.
82 in that age when the worthy Titus with help from the highest king avenged the wounds from which the blood that Judas sold had flowed.
And what year is this? When worthy Titus avenged the wounds from which the blood that Judas sold had flowed. Do you guys know what year this is? Do you guys not not know your Christian history? No, it's 70.
Do you understand? 70. 70 is the is the year when the Romans burned down the second temple. Okay. Titus is the emperor and he burned down the second temple.
All right. And the Christians believe this is vengeance for the crucifixion of Jesus. All right. Keep on going.
85. I had sufficient fame beyond that spirit replied. I bore the name that lasts the longest and honors most. But faith was not yet mine. So gentle was the spirit of my verse that roame drew me on.
Son of Tulus to her, and there my brow deserved a crown of myrtle. On earth my name is still remembered, Stacius. I sang of thieves and then of great Achilles. I fell along the way of that last labor. The sparks that warmed me.
The seeds of my aror were from the holy fire. The same that gave more than a thousand poets light and flame. I speak of the iniative when I wrote first. It was mother to meet whis nurse. My work without it would not weigh an ounce.
And to have lived on earth when Virgil lived. For that I would extend by one more year the time I owe before my exiles end.
Okay. So, so like what he's saying is this. Okay. The guy has spent 500 years in the same crap over and over to make himself worthy of God. And but there's one person he admires more than God and it's Virgil, right?
Because Virgil is the holy fire. And he says, "You know what? If I had a chance to meet Virgil just once, I would keep on going for another year.
171:30Okay. And Virgil is next to him, right? So, how is Virgil feeling right now? He's ecstatic, right? He'd be like, "Oh, wow.
I'm Virgil. Yeah, I'm better than God. Yeah. Wow. I'm the holy fire.
Yeah. I nursed you. Yeah, that's me, man. Okay, you understand? All right.
And now we're going to read this and and appreciate there's no way D could have created Virgil. He had to summon Virgil. Okay, because it's too real. Okay, keep on reading.
Verse 103. These words made Virgil turn to me. And as he turned, his face through silence said, "Be still." And yet the power of will cannot do all. For tears and smiles are both so faithful to the feelings that have prompted them that true feeling escapes the will that would subdue. But I smiled like a man whose eyes would signal at this.
The shade was silent and he stared where sentiment is clearest at my eyes.
Stop. So okay, this is really important. Okay, you guys. Do you guys know what's going on here? This is You have to actually seen this yourself.
You can actually just make the stuff up. What's going on here? Yes. Yes.
Virgil is like, "I'm not better than God. This guy's like too much of a super fan. Dante, please don't leak it." Yes.
But Dante's eyes are so like wide. And the
the the shades just like look at him and it's like it's like in a pantoime where he's like he's behind you or something. Yes.
And the shade and he basically betrays
Virgil's identity to the shade just with his expression.
So much happens, right? And so much emotion. so realistic and it's all just like micro expressions, right? It's just like the like you know like the um like Virgil's just like a quick look at him, right? He doesn't even say anything.
He's like just a quick look like you know and then Virgil and then Donny's like like like he can't stop himself.
173:30He's just full of emotion and Satis looks and says h you know something. Okay. All right. So this is all really realistic. All right.
Um keep on going. Line 112 and said, "So may your trying labor end successfully. Do tell me why just now your face showed me the flashing of a smile. Now I am held by one side and the other one keeps me still. The other conjures me to speak.
But when therefore I sigh, my master knows why and tells me." Do not be afraid to speak, but speak and answer what he has asked you to tell him with such earnestness. At this I answered, "Ancient spirit, you perhaps are wondering at the smile I smiled, but I would have you feel still more surprised. He who is guide who leads my eyes on highest, that same Virgil, from whom you derived the power to sing of men and of the gods. Do not suppose my smile had any source beyond the speech you spoke. Be sure it was those words you said of him that were the cause." Now he had bent to kiss my teacher's feet.
But Virgil told him, "Brother, there's no need. You're a shade. A shade is what you see." And rising he now you can understand how much love burns in me for you. When I forget our insubstantiality, treating the shades as one treats solid things.
Okay. All right. Again, the contrast, right? When where Sudolo meets Virgil, Virgil tells him right away, "I'm Virgil." And wow, man, I'm your biggest fan. And then sort of bows before Virgil and Virgil's ecstatic.
Now Sadius is like, "I'm your biggest fan." And Virgil's like, "Oh, okay." Like he doesn't want him to know I'm Virgil. And then uh uh Donnie tells him and Stadius kisses his feet. Okay. He lowers himself and kisses the feet of Virgil, right?
175:30You remember where where you know um when Solo talks to Virgil, Virgil's like, "Yeah, I'll give my autograph and let's do a selfie." And like, you know, Virgil is like just loving the moment. But here, Virgil's like, "Could you please stop? Just stop, man. Just stop." Right? Why is Virgil behaving like this?
And and again, it's impossible to create a Virgil. You have to summon this guy. Yes. I think because he realizes that it's like really hitting in his head that his poetry is kind of undermining the true message of the universe. And so like he's like if I if my work has made someone at the very height of purgatory act this way, it just kind of makes him feel embarrassed.
And he's like this this really isn't what I should have done. I should not have inspired someone to behave this way. And it's kind of making him self-conscious about what he wanted before.
Okay. Yes.
And also this act of kissing someone's feet is what happens in the Bible where u a woman with her hair she wipes his feet with oil and kisses his feet. So it's kind of the same act of worshiping God in a way. And this guy is literally going to God in a split second. But he's like, "Oh, by the way, before that you're better than God." And then he makes Virgil like, "Oh my gosh, I hope this guy doesn't get sent back to somewhere or like get into trouble or maybe I don't know."
Yeah. Okay. But then why why is Virgil You're saying like Virgil is a humble guy, but when Sello kiss bows before him, Virgil's ecstatic, right? There's a paradox here. And the symmetry shows you there's a paradox to explain what's going on.
And and the answer is not because, you know, he's embarrassed at the idea that he's God. He's not. He wants to be God, right? Um why is he behaving like this? Yes.
177:30Does he resent that this guy's going to heaven?
Why would he resent this guy going to heaven? He didn't resent going to heaven, right? Why would he resent this guy Stadius going to heaven?
He's also a pagan poet.
Yeah, right. You understand? Okay. Remember how awkward it is for Virgil to meet with Ko, right? Virgil doesn't really really doesn't want to talk to Ko and Ko really doesn't want to talk to him.
They hate each other here. Okay, it's different because that worships Virgil, but Virgil really doesn't want to talk to him because he's a pagan. He's not supposed to go to heaven. Do you understand? Like he is a Roman epic poet.
He is a pagan who did not convert. Same as Virgil. So if you're Virgil, you're like, "Uh, what's going on here?" Right? Okay. So, let's think about this.
Okay. Um, we talked how when Ka when Virgil met Ko, Virgil just engaged in conic dissonance, right? He just forgot that Ko is a pagan. Okay. But here he is able to recognize the fact that yes, uh, Satis is a pagan and and I'm a pagan and he's better than I am.
How is he able to do do this? Okay. Okay. Um, we're running out of time, but but but like I I'll throw an idea out out there for you guys. Okay.
You cannot fool yourself ever. Okay. You think you can fool yourself, but you cannot fool yourself ever. Why? Because you exist in infinite dimensions.
And in some parts you you still know the truth.
179:30In most parts, you may not know the truth. Does that make sense? Okay, remember this. Remember this. There's no way you can ever fool yourself.
Maybe you can fool everyone in the world, but you cannot fool yourself. Okay, so Virgo in his heart, he does know that um it is not true that pagans cannot go to heaven. It is not true at all. He knows that. But he does not want to admit it to Dante because he's more he's more concerned about his face than he is about the truth.
Okay. Does that make sense? Uh yes.
Yeah. But that still doesn't explain why he doesn't why he's so humble about him worshiping him.
He's not humble. He's just annoyed.
Okay. Okay. So, imagine this. Okay. Like imagine this.
So, we've been here for two weeks. Okay. And then and then 20 years later, uh, sorry. So what what was your name?
Okay, Ivy. Okay. 20 years later, we Ivy and I running each other um in New York City. Who Paris? Who?
Who cares? Okay. But like we're walking the streets and like and like I'm walking and like she sees me and like she recognizes me and says, "Hey, uh, Professor Dang, uh, you remember me?" I like, "I don't remember you." Uh, and then she's like, "Oh." And then she goes on like, "Oh, we we took the seminar and like, yeah, I remember you. You you you know, you were shy. You were very smart." Yeah, sure.
And I'm very happy because she remembers me. And obviously the course had a huge huge impact on her. And I ask her, "So Ivy, uh, what are you doing now?" And she says, "Oh, I'm teaching Dante at Harvard or or Yale." Okay. What do I do now? Sorry, I have I I have an appointment.
See you later, Ivy. Okay. I'm not Why would I do that? Like, sorry. Uh, I have an appointment right now.
I'll I'll talk to you later. Why would I do that?
181:30Well, if you Virgil, then I guess you're jealous. But if you'd be Dante, then you'd be happy for her, right?
Problem.
That's my problem. You You think?
Well, yeah. I mean, you could be happy for her, but you can also be jealous that you didn't make it that far. Yeah. I mean, I think everyone would be a bit jealous, right? I I And it's not like Dante or Virgil.
It's just like
human nature.
It's his human nature.
Yeah.
Okay. So So again, that's why I say like Virgil's cannot be crit he can only be summoned because his reaction is so human, right?
Okay. It's very hard to make something like this up. you you you you need to have like seen it yourself
to to appreciate this. Okay, does that does that make sense? Okay. So, Virgil's really angry and really jealous at status because status has reached um heaven. But it's also it's also um about the b it's kind of like a burden, right?
He says there's no need your shade. A shade is what you see. I'm like like he the studies puts like a burden on Virgil and Virgil can't really deal with that because like he can't deal with the with the love of status.
Yeah. And and it's also like absurd, right? You're both like shades, right? So if you kneel down, I can't actually feel you kissing my feet like like this is absurd. Espec
I guess the other thing other than summoning Virgil that he could have done is in real life if Dante met Beric's husband. So the historically she mar she died young but married like a banker.
Yeah, that's right.
So it's like if the banker came to maybe Dante felt this for one second like the banker came to Dante and like I'm your biggest fan of all time and he's like well you married my one true love and then she died so like h how much can you I don't really care that you're my fan or it upsets you.
Yeah. Yeah. It's just human nature. Okay. And that's why the line comedy is
183:31such literature because it's something that that resonates with you. Okay. you just feel it's true and it gives you tremendous insight into yourself as well as uh human nature and and you know it's just a natural reaction right um okay the other thing I will point out is okay we we'll keep on reading 21 okay oh 22 now yeah sure
kto 22 the angel now has left behind us he who had directed us to the six terraas having erased one pee that scarred my face he had declared that Those who long for justice are blessed. And his voice concluded that message with situ without the rest. And while I climbed behind the two swift spirits, not laboring at all, for I was lighter than I had been along the other stairs. Virgil began love that is kindled by virtue virtue will in another find reply. As long as that love's flame appears without, so from the time when juvenile descending among us, and hell's limbo had made plain the fondness that you felt for me, my own benevolence towards you has been much richer than any ever given to a person one has not seen.
Thus now these stairs seem short, but tell me, and as a friend, forgive me if excessive cander lets my reigns relax, and as a friend exchange your words with me, how is it that you found within your breast a place for avarice when you possess the wisdom you had nurtured with such care? These words at first brought something of a smile to St. Sass, then he answered, "Every word you speak to me is a dear sign of love. Indeed, because true causes are concealed, we often face deceptive reasoning and things provoke perplexity in us. Your question makes me sure that you're convinced, perhaps because my circle was the fifth, that in the life I once lived, avar had been my sin.
Note then that I was far from avarest. It was my lack of measure. Thousands of months have punished. And if I had not corrected my assessment by my understanding what your verses meant when you as if outraged by human nature
185:32exclaimed, why cannot you, a holy hunger for gold, restrain the appetite of mortals? I'd now while rolling weights no sorry joust. Then I became aware that hands might open too wide like wings and spending of and of this as of my other sins I did repent. How many are to rise again with heads cropped close whom ignorance prevents from reaching repentance in and at the end of life and know that when a sin is countered by another fault directly opposite to it then here both sins see their green wither thus I join those who pay for avaras in my pgation though what brought me here was prodigality its opposite now when you sang the savage wars of those twin sorrows of jastice of the singer of the collic poems it does not seem from those notes struck by you and Cleo there that you had not you that you had yet turned faithful to the faith without which righteousness works that do not suffice. If that is so, then what son or what candles drew you from darkness, so that in their wake you set yourselves behind the fishermen?
And he to him, you were the first to send me to drink within harnesses caves, and you the first who after God enlighten me. You did as he who goes by night and carries the lamp behind him. He's of no help to his own self, but teaches those who follow. when you declared the ages are renewed justice and man's first time on earth return from heaven a new progeny descends through you I was a poet and through you a Christian but that you may see more plainly plainly I'll set my hand to color what I sketch
okay all right so um so Virgil asks Sadius why are you in the terrace of avarice and sadius replies okay you may think that I was greedy in life but I was the opposite. In fact, I was wasteful. But it's the laws of nature that one extreme, the two extremes are basically the same thing. Okay? So if you are really greedy but if you are
187:34very wasteful, it's the same thing. And so the punishment is the same. Okay. And then um what Virgil asked him is how did you come to this place? Because in Virgil's understanding, only Christians are allowed access to heaven.
And what Virgil, sorry, what Sadius says is, "Well, I converted secretly." Yeah, I converted secretly. Um, and who convinced him to convert to Christianity?
Poet poets. And to you, a Christian?
Yeah, this is a paradox, right? We know Virgil is not a Christian. In fact, he's an anti-Christian almost. And so, Sus is saying like, "For you, I become a poet." And we know because he keeps on quoting the Iniad. Okay?
He's just memorized the Iniad. He keeps on quoting the Iniad. He says like, "F you, I've been able to become a Christian." But we know the Iniad. How does this make any sense? Yeah.
Yeah. using an the structure of empire that has kind of made it kind of spread so powerfully.
Okay.
Maybe I don't.
Okay. Anyone else?
Yes. The mercy of Christ becomes so much more apparent that it's the true way and it's like the divine truth when you're immersed in the anid. So in the final moment when a near not the final but the major moment where Nas kills Turnis if you're really moved by that and you meditate on that moment for a long time and you think what would it have to be for Turnis for for Anas not to kill Turnis what mercy would he have had to have that would have turned you made you look for a preacher that would have changed your mind.
Yeah that's that's great that's
189:34fantastic. Okay. And that's exactly what Satis is saying here. I read the Iniad and the themes and ideas that you um tell in the Iniad convince me that I must turn to Christ. But okay, didn't Virgil write the Iniad?
So why didn't why didn't Virgil embrace Christianity the way that Statist embraced Christianity? Virgil is a poet. Is that just a weer? What's going on here?
It's like he changed the ending like Virgil ruined the ending of the Aniid which made it so powerful for empire but ruined what could have been the Christian prelude.
Yeah, but but you just said that it moved Stadius to convert to Christianity. What's going on here?
It can move everybody except Virgil. He's like the unluckiest guy in the world. Where
is this luck?
Well, maybe it's I don't know.
Anyone else? He also follows saying in 74 that but that you may see more plain I set my hand to color what I sketch.
Oh no no no he he's trying to explain his life.
Oh okay.
Yeah yeah yeah. He he'll explain his life story and how the exact details of how he converted.
Okay. So let's try to figure this out. Okay. All right. So remember the poets are channeling the divine fire, the holy fire.
Okay. And the poetry is meant to um capture the holy fire so that others can be illuminated by it. Okay? So he's trying to create this vessel. Um but we have free will so we can do whatever we want.
And then Virgil became seduced by power. So he turned this vessel into a weapon for empire. Okay. But but the so bas basically before the vessel was meant to be like a um like a glass where everyone can just feel the light but now it's like this bronze vessel a weapon. Okay.
But the holy fire
191:36is so strong that there are things that leak out and if you're willing if you are a perceptive enough reader you're able to still feel that light and that light will draw you to Christianity. Does that make sense? Okay. But the poet has committed evil and sin by trapped in the holy fire. And so the poet um um is convinced that this vessel that this weapon he's created is actually for good reasons.
And so this conissonance blinds the poet from seeing the holy light. Does that make sense guys? Okay. That's right. Stadius can be converted by the Iniad, but Virgil cannot be converted by the Iniad.
Okay, Fred Fred, did you want to add something or
it just I keep my mind keeps going back to the moment when Anias sees Palace's sword belt and in the Anid that's so um the Anid portrays like Anias he's really sad he's really upset he's so close to showing mercy to Turnis but then he sees the sword belt of his friend this young guy palace who Turnis had killed and it's almost it's like the divine light leaking out it's like Virgil going, I wish I could. I wish I had written it. I wish I want to write it that Anias shows mercy.
But it's almost like seeing the sword belt of one of your comrades is the is empire. It's like the people that come before you, you're trying to propagate your empire for them, and that's what makes him change. So, it's like Virgil's trying to say that he wished he wished he hadn't written that, but he just did.
Yeah. And and Virgil did say he didn't he wish he didn't write that because he wanted to burn the manuscript, right? So, so yeah. So, so that's what's going on here. Okay.
All right. Let's let's keep on reading.
Line 76. Disseminated by the messages messengers of the eternal kingdom. The true faith by then had penetrated all the world. And the new preachers preached in such accord with what you'd
193:37said, and I have just repeated that I was drawn into frequenting them. Then they appeared to me to be so saintly that when Domian persecuted them, my own laments accompanied their grief. And while I could, as long as I had live, I helped them, and their honest practices made me disdainful of all other sex. Before, within my poem, I'd led the Greeks unto the streams of thieves, I was baptized. But out of fear, I was a secret Christian, and for a long time showed myself as pagan.
For this half-heartedness, for more than four centuries, I circled the fourth circle. And now, may you who lifted up the lid that hid from me the good of which I speak while time has left us as we climb, tell me, where's our ancient terrace? and chicelius and ploutus where as various if you know tell me if they're damned and in what quarter all these imperious I and many other my guide replied are with that great to whom the muses gave their gifts in greatest measure our place is the blind prison its first circle and there we often talk about the mountain where those who were our nurses always dwell is with us Antifon Simony and Agathon as well as many other Greeks who once wore laurel upon their brow and There of your own people once the antiggony deili is mani sad still argia as she was there one can see the woman who showed langia and there to to roia's daughter there's fetus and with her sisters there damia both poets now were silent once again intent on their surroundings they were free of stairs and walls with day's first four handmaidaidens already left behind and with the fifth guiding the chariot pull and lifting it so that its horn of flame rose is always higher. My master said, "I think it's time that we turn our right shoulders toward the terrace edge, circling the mountain in the way we're used to." In this way, habit served us as a banner. And when we chose that path, our fear was less because that worthy soul gave his two were in the lead.
I walked alone behind them, listening to their colloquy, which taught me much
195:37concerning poetry. But their delightful conversation soon was interrupted by a tree that blocked our path. Its fruits were fine. Their scent was sweet, and even as a fur tree tapers upward from branch to branch, that tree there tapered downward so as I think to ward off any climber. Upon our left, where wall enclosed her path, rich bright running water fell from the high rock and spread itself upon the leaves above.
When the two poets had approached the tree, a voice emerging from within the leaves cried out, "This food shall be denied to you." Then it cried, Mary's care was for the marriage feast being seemly and complete, not for her mouth, which now would intercede for you. And when they when they drank of old, the Roman women were satisfied with water, and young Daniel through his disdain of food acquired wisdom. The first age was as ferris gold. When hungry men found the taste of acorns good, when thirsty they found that that every little stream was nectar. When he was in the wilderness, the Baptist had fed on nothing more than honey locusts.
For this he was made great, as glorious as in the gospel is made plain to you.
Okay. So they arrive in the terrace of gluttony. And uh the glutton in the terrace of gluttony there's a tree with lots of fruit and um the sinners just look at it and they're not able to touch it and they become much more hungry and as eminated over time. Okay. So really important point is there's a paradox right?
How is Stadius who is a pagan how is he able to ascend heaven and what he tells Virgil is well I converted secretly no one knows this but I converted secretly and yeah that was lazy of me that that was slothful that show lack of faith and that's why I was in the terrorist of sloth for four centuries and it seems as though this relieves the paradox right the softs paradox well because he converted secretly well the problem here Okay,
197:39let's go to paradise 20. Paradise 20, everyone. And in paradise 20, there is going to be to be an eagle. Okay. And in this eagle are the great kings of time.
Okay. Including David. And one of them, one of these uh people is Rifus. Okay. Rifus.
And Riftheus is a Trojan. What's the problem, guys? Why is this a problem? Why is this a paradox? Yes.
Yeah. So, there's no way this could have happened, right? Because this this is not just before the time of Jesus. It's also before the time of the Hebrews, man. So, like this is like really confusing now for us.
Okay. So sis, can we read um paradise 20 please? Can can we go go please? Uh 20 and we'll skip to um uh 37. Okay.
And this is the ego of light talking to Dante saying like who is the most worthy to be inside me? Okay. 37.
He who gleams in the center of my eyes pupil. He was the singer of the Holy Spirit who bore the ark from one town to another. Now he has learned the merit will can earn. His song had not been spurred by grace alone, but his own will in part had urged him on. Of those five flames that arching for my brow, he who is nearest to my beak is one who comforted the widow for her son.
Now he has learned the price one pays for not following Christ through his experience of this sweet life and of its opposite.
Okay, so there are certain individuals within this ego who are divine and holy. Okay, the first one is David. That makes sense. Second one is Trajan. Um, who is who was a Roman emperor.
Uh, let's keep on going.
199:42Um,
49.
49. And he whose place is next on the circumference of which I speak along the upward arc delayed his death through truthful penitence. Now he has learned that the eternal judgment remains unchanged. Though worthy prayer below makes what falls due today take place tomorrow.
Okay. So uh Trajan convert to Christianity. Yes. Uh okay that makes sense. Keep on going.
55. The next two who follows one whose good intention bore evil fruit to give place to the shepherd with both the lost and me made himself Greek. Now he has learned that even though the world be ruined by the evil that derives from his good act, that evil does not harm him. He he whom you see along the downward arc was William and the land that mourns his death for living Charles and Frederick now laments. Now he has learned how heaven loves the just ruler.
And he would show his this outwardly as well, so radiantly visible. Who in the world below would hold that he who was the fifth among the lights that formed the circle was the Trojan Rifus. Now he has learned much that the world cannot discern of God's own grace, although his sight cannot divine not reach its deepest sight. As if it were a lark at large in air, a lark that sings at at first and falls and then falls still. content with final sweetness that fulfills such things.
Okay, stop. Okay. All right. So, again, this makes sense until we get to the fifth and last person who who is Rifus. And what the ego says is like um okay well Rifus uh he was born before the time of of Jesus so he could not convert it.
Trajan was born after Jesus so he could have converted. How do we explain Rifus? This is a huge paradox, right? Again, it's one thing for Stadius to convert secretly and then he goes to purgatory. Then through 500 years of penance, he climbs to heaven.
But up here in paradise is Rifus, a Trojan who was born
201:44before the time of both the Hebrews and of Jesus, and he makes it to heaven. How is this possible? Okay. Yeah. Um uh yes.
I mean that just shows like V uh Dantis democratic sense, right? Everyone can make it to heaven if they really will it like if they really want to.
Okay. Okay. But Rifus could not have wield it because he didn't know heaven exists, right? He didn't know Jesus exists. He didn't know God exists.
He doesn't know that stuff.
Yeah. But you can still follow your intuition and know what's good and right. Like you don't need the knowledge of heaven. You just need to be a good human.
Exactly. Okay. Does that make sense? Yeah. So that's what Donnie is saying is it's revolutionary.
Okay. It can really counteracts the point that Virgil makes which is like you have to be a Christian in order to make it to heaven. So, let me ask you this question. Why is Virgil so adamant? Why is he so focused on this one rule?
And why is D like actually no?
Because it's basically his mask or excuse of not making it to heaven. It's like, oh, they kind of excluded me because I was just born at the wrong time. Okay, it's not my fault. Like Jesus was so much later than me. It's, you know, taking the blame off him.
But then now everybody else way older than him before him who had never met Jesus or the concept of Hebrews, they went to heaven. It's like kind of a slap in the face. It's like you're just basically not a good enough guy. Okay. Like to make it to heaven.
Face it guy. Like don't you know?
Yeah.
Fine excuse.
Exactly. So he's constantly excusing himself, right? He rather again burn in hell than just admit he's wrong. Um Rifus is interesting because who creates Rifius's character?
203:44Virgil Dante only knows about Rifius because speaks of of of Virgil. C can we go Google this? We'll Google Rifus and see what comes up. Okay.
Oh, okay.
Okay. Okay. So, so, so, so just read uh not that the the sorry uh go back.
Okay.
Yeah. Just just do
sure just just read that part. Okay.
Rifus was a Trojan hero in the name of a figure from the Anita Virgil.
Okay, that this is why we know this guy. Virgil created this guy.
Okay, and quite honestly, all Virgil says is he is the most virtuous of all of all the Trojans. That's that's entire line in in the Iniad. He's not a major character. Okay. So So can we write what what V what Virgil writes?
Just just open up. Yeah. Virgil writes, "Uniquely the most just of all the Trojans, the most faithful preserver of equity, but the gods decided otherwise."
Okay, so this is a jab at Virgil, right? V Virgil says, "Yeah, he's he's he's the wisest, the the most just of the um Trojans, and uh the gods didn't care." And D's like, "No, the gods do care. Thank you very much. If you are righteous, if you are just, if you're virtuous, you will always go to heaven regardless of time and space, regardless of your belief. Okay?
Regardless what Virgil says. Okay? So again, the divine comedy is a rejection of Virgil, but it's also born of Virgil. Okay? It's it's like the father-son relationship.
Okay. Let's uh go back to um uh purgatory. Uh one, I think. Are we done with this
205:47one?
Yes.
No, we're done.
Yes.
23. Okay. So, you guys see how clever Dante is, right? He doesn't tell you outright, but he gives you like these clues, and once you put the clues together, the answer is pretty obvious. Okay.
Console 23. When I was peering so intently through the green boughs, like a hunter who so used would waste his life in chasing after birds, my more than father said to me, "Now come, son, for the time our journey can commit as to be used more fruitfully than this." I turned my eyes, and I was no less quick to turn my steps. I followed those two sages whose talk was such my going brought no less, and there labia man domin. Oh gentle father, what is this I hear? asked, and he perhaps their shades who go loosening the knot of what they owe.
Even as pensive pilgrims do, who when they've overtaken folk unknown to them along the way, will turn but will not stop. So overtaken us, they had come from behind, but were more swift. A crowd of souls devout and silent, looked at us in wonder. Each shade had dark and hollow eyes. Their faces were pale and so emaciated that their taught skin took its shape from bones beneath.
I don't believe that even Ion had been so dried down to his very hide by hunger when his fast made him fear most thinking I told myself I see the people who lost Jerusalem when Mary plunged her beak into her son the orbits their of their eyes seemed like a ring that's lost its gems and he who in the face of man would read oh mo would hear have recognized the m who if he knew not how would have believed believe that longing born from odor of a tree, odor of water could reduce soul. So I was already wondering what had so famished them, for I had not learned the reason for their leanness and sad scuff scurf. When there a shade, his eyes deep in his head turned toward me, staring steadily, and then he cried
207:48aloud, "What grace has granted me." I never would have recognized him by his face, and yet his voice made plain to me what his appearance had obliterated. The spark rekindled in me everything I knew about those altered features. Thus I realized it was FZ's face. "Ah, don't reproach me for the dried out scabs that stain my skin," he begged. "Nor for the lack of flesh on me, but do tell me the truth about yourself.
Do tell me who those two souls there are, those who are escort escorting you. May you not keep yourself from speaking to me."
Okay, stop. Okay. All right. So, Fer Bon Bonati Fer Bonati, he is actually uh Donniey's childhood best friend. He's also a poet and um they enjoy making fun of each other through their poetry.
Uh Fer's sister is Marta. Okay, we met Picarda in heaven. His brother is also Corso. Okay, Corso is the brother who tr who adopted Picarda from the convent because Corso was intent on power and Corso will eventually die and burn in hell. Okay, but Feresi is a very important character.
Line 55. Your face which I once wept on when you died, I answered him. now gives me no less cause for sad lament seeing you so deformed but tell me for God's sake what has unleashed you so don't make me speak while I'm amazed he who's distracted answers clumsily and he to me from the eternal counsel the water and the tree you left behind receive the power that makes me waste away all of these souls who grieving sing because their appetite was gluttonous and thirst and hunger here resent by themselves the fragrance of the fruit and of the water that sprayed through that green tree kindles s us craving for food and drink and not once only as we go around the space our pains renewed. I speak of pain, but I should speak of solace. For we're guided to those trees by that same longing that had guided Christ when he
209:49had come to free us through the blood he shed and in his joy joyousness called out Eli. And I to him for that day when you exchanged the world for better life until now less than five years have evolved. And if you waited for the moment when the power to sin was gone before you found the hour of the good grief that suckers us and wets us once again to God. How have you come so quickly here? I thought to find you down below where time must pay for time.
And he to me it is my Nella who with her abundant tears has guided me to drink the sweet bor wood of tor to torments. She with size and prayers devout has set me free of that slope where one waits and has freed me from circles underneath the circle. She my gentle widow whom I loved most dearly was all the more beloved and praised by God as she's more alone in her good works. For even the barbagia of Sardinia is far more modest in its women than that barbagia when I left her. Oh sweet brother, what would you have had me say?
A future times already visible to me a time not too far off from now when from the pulpit it shall be forbidden to those immodest ones, Florentine women to go displaying bosoms with bare paps. What ordinances spiritual civil were ever needed by barbarian or sessan women to make them go covered? But if those shameless ones had certain knowledge of what s swift heavens readying for them, then they would have mouths open now to howl. For if our foresight here does not deceive me, they'll be sad before the cheeks of those whom lullabies can now appease grow beards. Ah, brother, do not hide things any longer.
You see that I am not alone, for all these people stare at where you veil the sun. At this I said to him, if you should call to mind what you have been with me, and I with you, remembering now will still be heavy. He who precedes me turned me from that life some days ago when she who's the sister of him. I pointed to the son was showing her roundness to you. It is he whose led me through the deep night of the truly
211:49dead with this true flesh that follows after him. His help has drawn me up from there climbing and circling around this mountain which makes straight you whom the world made crooked. And he says that he will bear me company until I reach the place where Beatrice is. There I must remain without him. It is Virgil who speaks to me in this way and I point it to him.
This other is the shade for whom just now your kingdom caused its very its every slope to tremble as it freed him from itself.
So D meets his childhood best friend and he's ecstatic to see fors again, right? But he's but he's confused and he asked for um I thought you were supposed to wait in enter purgatory for a long long time. It's been five years since 5 years since your death and already you made it really high up and like how is this possible for essay and and what does he Fors say his his his widow Nella right prayed every day for him and because Nella was particularly virtuous and beloved by God then uh Forza was able to climb up very very high okay and this explains why there are certain infants in paradise, right? Because their parents were really virtuous and prayed for them every single day. Okay.
Um let's keep on going to count 24, please. Our talking did not slow our pace. Our pace not slowing our talking, but conversing, we moved quickly like a boat of fair wind drives. and recognizing that I was alive, the shades they seemed to be things twice dead, drew amazement from the hollows of their eyes. And I, continuing my telling, added, "Perhaps he's more slow in his ascent than he would had he not met the other.
But tell me, if you can, where is Picarda? And tell me if among those staring at me, I can see any person I should note." My
213:50sister, and I know not whether she was greater in her goodness or her beauty on High Olympus is in triumph. She rejoices in her crown already. He began then added, "It is not forbidden to name each s shade here. Abstinence has eaten away our faces." And he pointed, "This is Bonjuna. Bonjuna deuca, the one beyond him, even more emaciated than the rest, had clasped the holy church.
He was from tour, his fast purchased boss, eels, Renachia's wine. And he named many others one by one, and at their naming they all seemed content, so that for this no face was overcast. I saw their teeth were biting emptiness, both Ubaldin de laila and Bon Bonaface, who shepherded so many with his staff. I saw Messer Marquees, who once had more ease less dryness, drinking it poorly, and yet could never satisfy his thirst. But just as he looks and then esteems one more than another, so did I praise him of Luca, for he seemed to know me better.
he murmured. Something like Gentuka was what I heard from the place where he could feel the wound of justice that denudes them so. Oh soul, I said, who seemed so eager to converse with me, do speak so that I hear you, for speech may satisfy both you and me. He answered, although men condemn my city, there is a woman born. She wears no veil as yet because of whom you will find it pleasing.
You're to journey with this prophecy as if as if there is something in my murmuring you doubt. Events themselves will bear me out. But tell me if the man whom I see here is he who brought the new rhymes forth. Beginning ladies who have intelligence of love. I answered, I'm one who when love breathes in me takes takes note.
What he within dictates I in that way without would speak and shape. Oh brother, now I see. He said the knot that kept the notary gu and me short of the sweet new manner that I hear. I clearly see how your pence follow closely behind him who dictates, and certainly that did not happen with our pens, and he who sets
215:50himself to feriting profoundly can find no other difference between the two styles. He fell still contentedly, even as birds that winter on the Nile at times will slow and form a flock in air, then speed their flight, and form a file. So all the people who are mere moved much much more swiftly, turning away their faces, hurrying their pace because of leanness and leanness and desire. And just as he who's tired of running lets his comrades go ahead and slows his steps until he sees the panting of his chest, so did Ferz let the holy flock pass by and move behind with me, saying, "How long before I shall see you again?" I do not know, I said, how long I will live. And yet, however quick is my return, my longing for these shores would have me here sooner.
Because the place where I was set to live is daybyday deprived of good and seems along the way to wretched ruin. Do not be vexed, he said, for I can see the guiltiest of all dragged by a beast's tail to the valley where no sin is purged. At every step, the beast moves faster, always gaining momentum till it smashes him and leave his body leaves his body squally and death. those wheels. And here he looked up at the sky.
Do not have long to turn before you see plainly what I can't tell you more openly. Now you remain behind, for time is costly here in this kingdom. I should lose too much by moving with us thus at equal pace. Just as a horseman sometimes gallops out, leaving behind his troop of riders, so that he may gain the honor of the first clash, so with longer strides did he leave us. And I remained along my path with those two who were such great marshals of the world.
And we he'd gone so far ahead of us, and that my eyes that my eyes strained to follow him, just as my mind was straining after what he'd said. The branches of another tree heavy with root a life with grain appeared to me nearby just past a curve where I turned had turned. Beneath the tree I saw shades lifting hands crying I know not what up
217:50toward the branches like little eager empty-handed children who beg but he of whom they beg does not reply but to provoke their longing. He holds high and does not hide the thing they want. Then they departed as if disabused, and we immediately reached that great tree which turns aside so many prayers and tears. Continue on, but don't draw close to it. There is a tree above from which Eve ate, and from that tree above this plant was raised.
Among the boughs, a voice I know not whose spoke so. thus drawing close Virgil Stacius and Ished on along the side that rises. It said, "Remember those with double chests, the miserable ones born of the clouds, whom the battled when they gorged themselves, and those whom Gideon refused as comrades, those Hebrews who had drunk too m avidly when he came down the hills to Midian." So keeping close to one of that road's margins, we moved ahead, hearing of gluttonly, it had since prepaid by sorry penalties. Then with more space along the lonely path a thousand steps and more had brought us forward, each of us meditating wordlessly. What are you thinking of you three who walk alone?
A sudden a sudden voice called out at which I started like a scared young animal. I raised my head to see who it might be. No glass or metal ever seen within a furnace was so glowing or so red as one I saw who said, "If you'd ascend, then you must turn at this point. For whoever would journey unto peace must pass this way. But his appearance had deprived me of my sight.
So that as one who uses hearing as guide, I turned and followed my two teachers. And like the breeze of May that heralding that dawn the dawn dawning of the day, when it steeped in flowers and in grass stirs fragrantly, so did I feel the wind that blew against the center of my brow and clearly sent the movement of his wings, the air's ambrosia. And then I heard, "Blessed are those who embrace illumin so that in their breast the love taste does not awake too much desire, whose hungering is always in just measure."
219:51So So do this is your dream, right? You told us you had a dream of a tree calling to you, but there's a river that blocked the way and the tree was talking to you. And now we have a similar situation, right? where this is a tree with the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and everyone can only look at it longingly and the tree talks to them but you can never eat the fruit. What do you think?
Is your dream si similar to what's going on? So, so why do you think you have to have the dream?
No, no, no, no. I'm saying like why do you think you had the dream?
I'm still trying to figure it out. But like if I if I if I have to take a guess that like I'm looking for a change in my life right now and um and I've been thinking about like this uh the all the classes that I I took during this this this seminar and about like imagination and love and and especially like um during like I I feel I felt like pretty comfortable when we in the paradise right but as but like once we enter the hill and the purgatory I it made me to reflect on my past life about all the wrongs I did to other people and stuff. So maybe it's a way for me to seek redemption or something like that.
221:51Do you think when you had the dream you saw the future? Did you see the future in your dream? Well, do do you know his dream, Brad?
I think he had what we might call momentum in Indra's net. So, like all of the images we've been learning before primed him and that his dream basically preempted what would follow in the poem because the poem was so close a copy of these wonderful images that are in Indra's net. like everything we had been thinking about had led him up to this and it's like he just turned up to class early, you know, in in a sense.
Okay, that's interesting.
It didn't feel like I'm like experience the future. I mean, the sense of time seems like didn't exist in the in my dream.
Right. Right. Right.
It's like all past and present and future matched up together.
Right. But but like that's what we said in the universal unconscious, right? It's beyond time and space. It's all happening at once. Okay.
Are you surprised at all by this? You you you dreamt of this scene yesterday and now we're talking about this scene and we're trying to decipher your dream through this scene. Uh, not surprised honestly, but like I feel I feel it's like it's destined. It's it's destinated to be like this. Has anyone had a dream that was basically of the future?
So, this happens to you a lot. Okay.
223:53G give us an example. Uh it's nothing like special but uh sometimes it's just like uh when I enter like a building a hall or I just had a lunch with with a with a like with a with a stranger and it just clicks. I was like oh I I knew what would happen like five five minutes later or like uh like an hour later. Yeah. Okay, Fred, do
I just had some very strange ones where like I had an ex-girlfriend and I dreamt that her body had become like fully fertile and she was trying to feed me from her enlarged breasts and then like 2 days I had not spoken to her for many months and then 2 days later she like calls me and it was like one of the craziest moments of my life.
Yeah, but this happens a lot. Well, when I count it as a lot, it it feels like this many.
I'm saying like what I meant is I'm I'm not saying it happens to a lot to you, but I'm saying like it's actually pretty common in in the world, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
I went to Malaysia the night before I visited my uh godmother's house. She had a dream from God saying, "I'm going to bring you a daughter." And she was 40 something. She's like, "There's no way I'm going to have a daughter now. I'm not going to be Sarah." And next day I came to her house. She's like, "Ah, you're the kid." And so they accepted me immediately and then she told me long after about this trip.
Yeah. I mean, like, isn't it very common um that you think of a friend, right, and then your friend calls you the next day or next week? It's very common, man, right? We we've all had this experience. You're thinking of someone that person just calls you and says, "Hey, I was thinking of you and I wanted to blah blah blah." Okay.
All right. So, again, this gives credit to the idea of the universal unconscious. All right. Uh okay, let's keep on going.
225:57KTO 25. The hour when climbers cannot pause had come. The sun had left to Taurus the meridian and night had left it to the scorpion. Therefore, like one who will not stop but moves along his path no matter what he sees. If he's goatated by necessity, we made our way into the narrow gap and one behind the other took the stairs so straight that climbers there must separate.
And as the fledgling stork will lift its wings because it wants to fly but dares not try to leave the nest and lets its wing drop back. So I with my desire to question kindled then spent arrived as far as making ready to speak. But my dear father though our steps were hurrying did not stop talking for he said the iron of the arrows touched the long bow le let the shaft of speech fly off. Then I had confidence enough to open my mouth and ask him, "How can one grow lean when there's never need for nourishment?"
Okay, so this is a great question. Okay, so saw these shades becoming much more emissiated. Okay, and D is like, "Wait a minute here. They have no bodies, right? Therefore, you have no need for food.
So why would you become emaciated? How do you starve as a soul? This makes no sense. Okay, that's a question that Dante has. All right, so uh let's see what Virgil says.
Line 22. If you recall how Male was consumed, he said just when the fire brand was bent, this won't be hard to understand. And if you think how though your body swift, your image of the mirror captures it, then what perplexed will seem to you transparent, but that your will to know may be appeased heistas. And I'll I call on him and ask that he now be the healer of your doubts.
Okay. So what Virgil was saying is well so Meliger Meliger is a story where uh Meliger um he his soul is kept alive by a
227:58firewood and as long as this firewood is extinguished. So as long as this firewood is unbroken, then he lives. So what the mother does is hide the firewood so he can never be broken. But Miger then does something so outrageous that the mother wants to kill him. So then she finds a firewood and then burns it down and then Miger dies.
Okay. So what what he's saying is what you what you have to understand is a correspondence of things. Okay? The correspondence between the body, the soul and the spirit. So that one thing happens to to to one then the other then the other thing happens to the other.
Okay. So if your soul is starving then your body is starving. If your body is starving so is your soul starving. But what's the problem with this explanation? The body's gone, right?
So this is really confusing. So he doesn't really answer and he recognizes he doesn't really answer. So he he says, "Let Stadius answer." Okay. All right. Sus, you try now.
All right.
Line 31. If I explain eternal ways to him, Sass replied, "While you are present here, let my excuse be, I cannot refuse you." Then he began, "If son your mind receives and keeps my word, then what I say will serve as light upon the how that you have asked. The thirsty veins drink up the perfect blood. But not all of that blood. a portions left like leings that are taken from the table within the heart.
That part acquires power to form all of another's human limbs. As blood that flows through veins feeds one's own limbs, digested yet again that part descends to what is best not named. From there it drips into the natural receptacle upon another's blood. The two bloods makes one ready to be passive and one active because of perfect place. The heart prepared them.
The act of having reached the passive starts to work. First it coagulates and then quickens the matter it has made more dense having become a soul much like a plant. Though with this
229:59difference a plant's complete whereas a fetus still is journeying the active virtue labor. So the fetus may move and feel like a sea sponge and then it starts to organize the powers seated. At this point, son, the power that had come from the begget's heart unfolds and spreads that nature may see every limb perfected. But how the animal becomes a speaking being you've not yet seen. This point so hard it led one wiser than you are to earn in separating from the possible intellect the soul since he could see no organ for the mind.
So did he teach? Open your heart to truth. We now have reached and know that once the brain's articulation within the fetus has attained perfection. Then the first mover turns toward it with joy on seeing so much art and nature and breast into it new spirit. Vicorous which draws all that is active in the fetus into its substance and becomes one soul that lives and feels and has self-consciousness.
That what I say may leave you less perplexed. Consider the sun's heat that when combined with sap with that flows from vines is then made wine. And when lakesis lacks more threat than souls divide from the flesh potentially it bears with it the human and divine. But with the human powers mute the rest intelligence and memory and will are more acute in action than they were. With no delay the soul falls of itself astonishingly on one of two shores.
There it learns early what way it will journey. There once the soul is circumscribed by space, the power that gives for me radiates as and as much as once it formed life limbs and even as the saturated air since it reflects the rays the sun has sent takes rainbow colors as its ornament. So there where the soul stopped the nearby air takes on the form that so impressed on it a shape that is potentially real body. And then just as a flame will follow after the fire whenever fire moves. So that new form becomes the spirit's follower.
Since from that airy body it takes on its semblance. That soul is called shade. That shape forms organs for each
232:01sense even for sight. This airy body lets us speak and laugh. With it we form the tears inside the size that you perhaps have heard around this mountain. Just as we are held fast by longings and by other sentiments, our shade takes form. This is the cause of your astonishment.
Okay. So let me explain what he is saying here. Okay. Okay. And this goes back to the idea of the morphic fields that we discussed earlier.
Okay. So what he's saying is this. We know how the fetus turns into a baby which turns into a body. Right? That makes sense.
Okay. Um so the baby is in the womb and at some point the uh fetus becomes a baby. Okay. That is his biology. The problem is consciousness.
How does consciousness happen? And so what um he's saying is this at a certain point the baby is so developed. Okay, the baby is so developed that God can now smile upon it. And when go when God smiles upon it, what happens is that these um universal unconscious that we've discussed, what it does is that it creates a soul inside the baby. Okay, does that make sense?
As the baby develops limbs and um the full shape of the body, the soul itself starts to take shape as well. Okay. And we think that the soul, oh, it's a spark in us or it's part of the brain. No, it's actually the body itself. Okay.
And these are what called morphic fields. Morphic fields. So, think as though your body is now emitting energy fields. Okay? And that's how uh Franis was able to easily uh
234:02notice when Edward turned around. Okay? Does that make sense? because there are fields around you that feel the world spiritually around you and um connect you to the universal consciousness. Okay.
So what happens is that okay the these fields are now uh resembling your body. Okay. So each part of your body has its own field. Your organs have their own fields. Even when your body decomposes, these fields are still around that mimic your old body.
And as such, you can still feel the way that your old body used to feel. Not as much, but but there's still some elements to it. That's how people are able to feel pain both in hell and in purgatory. It doesn't make sense, guys. All right.
Uh yes.
What about the souls in heaven? Do they also have like this?
Excuse me.
Um what about the souls in heaven?
Yeah. Yeah. So, so this is what we what we learned in paradise, right? What happens in heaven is like once you ascend to the divine light, all these fields have returned home. So what they they do so what they do is they bend they bend to fit heaven.
Now does it make sense? Before these fields bended to fit your body once you go home to heaven because of divine light they now bend to fit the divine light. And so you lose basically uh the uh the body form completely. Okay. As a shade you have like half half but once you return to heaven then you become part of the uh divine unity again.
All right. So that's what he's saying here. Any questions about this? Yes.
Then so is it the soul or the body that
236:03feels hunger
when you're starving?
Is it?
Oh, excuse me.
Is it the soul or the body that feels hunger? Because well, normally you would say it's the body needs food. So it like says to the brain, I need food. But in your in that perception be different.
Okay. So on earth when we starve it's a physical reaction right it's a physical reaction does it make sense if if your body doesn't get enough food the organs break down and um you die okay but in purgatory it's a different process so the idea is that these this is the gluttony okay this is the terrace of gluttony and there's a tree calling to them and saying you know like you can smell me you can desire me but you must resist me. Does that make sense? Okay. So, what's happening is no longer at a body level but a soul level.
And so, the soul to um demonstrate its longing yet its restraint, it becomes much more u emaciated. Okay? Does that make sense? So it's a metaphorical fruit that but so it's it's not real hunger then because you
okay well they say it would it be real hunger right because because only if it's real does it have any meaning if you have to feel real pain real desire for it to have any meaning right okay so but but you need to understand like imagine two two dimensions okay your body's ex existing on one dimension your soul is existing on on another dimension. And here on earth, the both are combined together. But in purgatory, the body loses its um physical form. You no longer have a body, but the soul still maintains the semblance of the
238:04body. So you still hunger and you can still starve, but in a spiritual way. Does it make sense? So what's happening here is not at a physical level, but at a spiritual level. Did they have food in the other circles and the other um what Don is saying here?
There's no food. There's no need for food. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. It makes me think about like David's Psalms that my soul longs for the Lord as um the the deer longs for the stream or something and talking about drinking of this like eternal water or whatever like his soul. So I guess it's kind of the same thing like your soul can thirst for things and so this these ghosts uh or shadows are yeah longing for the same and I think there's also scientific experiment where like people who lose a limb like your body thinks that it can still control that limb and then it can that's how the robotics can work right so all the neurons near that aspect makes your uh brain still controls it so it's kind of like your soul as long as it thinks that it still has that body part you can somehow have that move it like to to be able to control or feel it.
Yeah. It's called phantom limbs. Okay.
Phantom limbs. Okay. Where like you lose actually um your entire arm, but you still at some level think it's still there. It's really strange. Okay.
But but but you can Google phantom limbs. It's it's a very common um psychological uh thing. Okay. But but the idea is this. Okay.
The idea is that our souls, okay, our souls, they only long for one thing, which is the the divine light, okay, to be closer to God, right? That's the divine light. That's what our souls aspire to. The divine light. But the problem is that we're inside bodies,
240:04okay? And our bodies has senses which is say like we have these different desires like for food, sex, water. Okay. And so we can we become really confused. We don't know what brings us happiness.
Is it lots of sex? Is it a Mercedes? Is it um wine? Right? We just we just become really really confused.
And so that's why we do stupid things. But once we shed our bodies, then the souls only desire the divine light. Okay? Doesn't make sense. The problem with gluttony is the memory of these things, our desire for these things are still there and we want to pay penance for this.
So our souls our souls engage in a process of uh emitiation which is a denial of the divine light in order to compensate for our gluttony on earth. So it's a conscious choice on our part to starve ourselves in order to pay penance for um our gluttony on earth. And how this system works is the tree um helps us remember our bodies through sense, right? It gives it gives us the like the scent of food and we desire it, but we're but we're souls. We can't actually eat food and so we have this emitiation going on.
Does it make sense you guys? Okay. And Okay. All right. Let's uh keep on going.
109. By now we've reached the final turning, we would meet and took took the pathway right at which we were preoccupied with other cares. There from the wall the mountain hurls its flames, but from the terrace side there whirls a wind that pushes back the fire and
242:04limits it. Thus on the open side, proceeding one by one, we went. I feared the fire on the left and on the right the precipice. My guide said, "On this terrace, it is best to curve your eyes the least distraction left and right. Left or right can mean a step you will regret." Then from the heart of that great confflration, I heard Sume Dave's Clemensier sung and was not less keen to turn my eyes.
And I saw spirits walking in the flames, so that I looked at them and at my steps sharing the time and had to look at each. After they'd reached that hymn's end, virum nonosuo were the words they cried aloud. Then they began the hymn in a low voice again. And done again they cried. Diana kept the woods and banished Heliche after he she'd felt the force of Venus's poison.
Then they returned to singing and they praised aloud those wives and husbands who were chased as virtue and as matrimony mandate. This is I think the way these spirits act as long as they are burned by fire. This is the cure and this the nourishment with which one has to heal the final wound of all.
Okay. All right. So, uh we'll go over by like five minutes. It's fine. Okay.
Um one last question is they are now in the final terrace which is the um terrorist of lust. Why would fire like stepping through fire help cure you of lust?
Uh yes. Um cuz if you're a lustful person, you're kind of like consumed by this like burning desire that you have for like other people's body. And then so if you want to pur purify yourself, you need to be burned um you need to be you need to be able to like withstand the burning fire to withstand your burning desire for like lust.
Okay, that makes sense for hell, right? uh to be punished for your lust through fire. But in purgatory, we want to prepare ourselves for heaven. We want to do penance and prepare ourselves for
244:06heaven.
Is it like cuz some of the times you're also like purified if you're like burned into like a very high temperature like kind of like pottery and stuff. And I hear in purgatory you are purified through fire. evident and how you're just punished by being burned.
Okay. Let Yes.
Uh I think um lust is not wrong but the people here they are kind of abusing the the the pleasure or like the power of lust so that they need to be they need to uh correct their um passive.
Okay. All right. So so let's continue the ceramics metaphor. Okay. Why do you have to put your ceramics into fire?
to harden
to harden it. Right. In hell infernal, how are the lustful being punished? Yeah. Because they are, you know, they're being whooped around, right?
Because they are not consistent. Because they are not hard enough. Do you understand? They're not firm. Do you understand?
So the fire, the entire point of fire is to make you firm. firming your faith, firming your commitment, firming your devotion. Okay. That's what the fire is doing, purifying you, but also basically hardening you. Okay.
All right. So, um that's it. That's great. That's it for today. Any questions?
Uh tomorrow? Yes. One one last question, Fred.
Just one quick question. Um, there was a line that really confused me earlier this morning, which is, "You feel delight as nature fashioned you to feel." Is this Dante saying that some people are more ready to experience the love of God while they're alive than others?
No. No. That's that's that's what it's saying. Okay. In Dante, nature and God are not the same thing.
Nature and God are not the same thing. It's really important for us to remember this because in Shakespeare, they're the same thing. We talked about this yesterday,
246:07right? where professor B was saying well nature naturalistic I'm like yeah but is there a god he's like well naturalistic right so in our world in Shakespeare world nature is god but in donn's world it's different because nature gives us our bodies but god gives us our soul you understand so the soul aspires to divine light but the but the body aspires to material pleasures okay does that make sense okay all right thanks guys so tomorrow's the last class and so um yeah so uh uh think of how this course has changed you okay and think about how the divine calling has impacted you and I love the idea that you guys having more dreams okay this this will be really important for tomorrow's discussion all right I'll see you everyone Uh-huh.