Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic Mind, where we pursue wisdom
Speaker 1: on the past between primary secondary worlds. I'm doctor Andrew Snyder,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there, welcome back. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to be continuing with our material from the
Speaker 1: fictional Philosophy of C. S. Lewis course with the main
Speaker 1: content on Parilandrum. Now, before we get to that, I
Speaker 1: do want to remind you that my current course on
Speaker 1: Plato' Stoicism Until we Have Faces is now underway, and
Speaker 1: so if you want to get that lumped in with
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Speaker 1: in coming up the beginning of twenty twenty six, and
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Speaker 1: delibered into one feed, and so forth. But for now,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get into perilandrum, beginning with a
Speaker 1: rendition of C. S. Lewis's Evolutionary Hymn performed by Hannah Gilmore,
Speaker 1: the same Hannah Gilmore who just wrapped up a Latin
Speaker 1: course for us, and so if you want to learn
Speaker 1: introductory Latin, make sure that you check out Hannah's course.
Speaker 1: I'll link that in the show notes, and patrons of
Speaker 1: Mythic Mind get half off her course, and so make
Speaker 1: sure they check that out. Send me a message. If
Speaker 1: you need information about that the fread let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and get into perilandru.
Speaker 2: Lead us save lotion, lead us up of futures and
Speaker 2: lister chop us, change us protas sweet us for sagnationest
Speaker 2: spare growing gassing yet prograssing lead us. Nobody knows where
Speaker 2: wrong gorgeous joy sorrow in the present water they while
Speaker 2: there's allway shamp to morrow wildly evy onword way, never
Speaker 2: knowing where we're going, we can ne go stract to
Speaker 2: w tever firytion.
Speaker 3: Or postavy, maturn, hairy, squashy or constation bl the side
Speaker 3: or square of.
Speaker 4: Stone, tuskdor toothless, mild, ruthless towards that tnal God we
Speaker 4: hearn ask not fit.
Speaker 2: God or travel breathrand.
Speaker 3: Lest your words imply static norms of God good and
Speaker 3: vlasin play.
Speaker 2: To a throne, don high such calastic candy, elastic abstract yardsticks,
Speaker 2: sweet night for two long half sages mainly lo lost
Speaker 2: grade nature simple text. He who runs can read it
Speaker 2: plainly conasguals. What comes next by evolving life is solving
Speaker 2: all the questions we per blast oh. Then value means
Speaker 2: survival value. If our progeny spreads and spawns and lesage
Speaker 2: trival that will prove fstty far from pleasant by present standards.
Speaker 2: It may well.
Speaker 1: Be hello, welcome back as we get ready for Parlandrum. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get started, I want to get many thanks
Speaker 1: to our own Hannah Gilmour for giving us that great
Speaker 1: rendition of C. S. Lewis's evolutionary hymn. And we'll be
Speaker 1: looking at the lyrics for that and just a little
Speaker 1: bit later in this video. And I was kind of
Speaker 1: debating with myself as to whether I include that for
Speaker 1: Perilandra or whether I hold it off for that hideous strength,
Speaker 1: and in the end I settled on both. Really, we
Speaker 1: see one continuous theme building throughout this series. In Out
Speaker 1: of the Side of the Planet, you know, Weston is
Speaker 1: portrayed as this scientific progressive right He's concerned about the
Speaker 1: next step in human evolution. What is it going to
Speaker 1: mean for humanity to evolve, to progress, to turn into
Speaker 1: whatever it is that comes next. We saw a lot
Speaker 1: of that really come out during Wesson's conversation with Oyarsa,
Speaker 1: when oars brings up the fact that Weston seems to
Speaker 1: have this great love for humanity and for progress, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't seem to actually love any particular humans. So
Speaker 1: he has this love, this worship, this idolatry for simply
Speaker 1: man in the abstract and progress in the abstract without
Speaker 1: any clear understanding as to where it is that he's going.
Speaker 1: I think of that horrifying scene in Willy Wonka on
Speaker 1: the older one Gene Wilder, where they're going through that
Speaker 1: tunnel and he's singing things about you know, there's no
Speaker 1: knowing where we're going. The flames of hell keep growing,
Speaker 1: and so we're just kind of progressing, we who knows where,
Speaker 1: but ultimately we aren't really progressing, we're actually descending. And
Speaker 1: we're going to see that play out in Perilandra that
Speaker 1: in Weston's vain pursuit of reaching upward, he is in
Speaker 1: fact actually being pulled downward, and so what he sees
Speaker 1: as transcendence is actually a descent. It's a being brought
Speaker 1: low rather than being brought high. Those who most grasp
Speaker 1: for power are typically grasped by power. And remember at
Speaker 1: the end of Out of the Silent Planet in that
Speaker 1: final chapter, and then in that PostScript, you know, Lewis
Speaker 1: comes out and tells us that Weston, which are put
Speaker 1: in quotation marks, and then he says, or the forces
Speaker 1: behind Weston are going to continue to play a leading
Speaker 1: role in the decades to come unless we do something
Speaker 1: about it. And so what are those forces that are
Speaker 1: at play in Weston? Well, and out of the silent planet,
Speaker 1: it seems to be something like unbridled science, you know,
Speaker 1: science for the sake of science, advancement for the sake
Speaker 1: of advancement, without asking the question what is it that
Speaker 1: we're advancing toward. And then we're gonna see in Perilandrum
Speaker 1: that the forces at work behind Weston might be something
Speaker 1: more diabolical, maybe even demonic. And so, really, the leading
Speaker 1: forces behind Weston, it's not just this scientism, it's actually
Speaker 1: something demonic. It's actually something diabolical. And then of course
Speaker 1: in that hideous strength, you know, I've spoilers at this point,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna see those threads really come together where
Speaker 1: we say, okay, maybe the pursuit of progress for the
Speaker 1: sake of progress and the demonic are actually one and
Speaker 1: the same. I mean, in many ways, Satan really is
Speaker 1: the quintessential progressive. He is moving away from established reality,
Speaker 1: trying to pave new paths, and that's that we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about moving forward. But I mean, if you
Speaker 1: know you're Milton, this is especially going to sound like
Speaker 1: Satan from Paradise Lost right. He is the freedom fighter
Speaker 1: of swords. He is somebody who falls in love with
Speaker 1: his own reason, his own creativity, and in so doing
Speaker 1: seeks to become his own God. And we in turn,
Speaker 1: as the terrestrials living under this fallen Arkhan, tend to
Speaker 1: do the same thing. We tend to follow his influence,
Speaker 1: and so it makes sense to include that evolutionary hymn
Speaker 1: in Perilandra as well as in that Hideous Strength. But out,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and get moving Perilandra. By the way,
Speaker 1: just I love these old, you know, eighties looking sci
Speaker 1: fi covers in the older editions. All right, so Perilandra.
Speaker 1: Now we start off with what I think is just
Speaker 1: a brilliantly well done creepy scene as C. S. Lewis himself,
Speaker 1: as the character in his story, is going to visit Ransom,
Speaker 1: and along the way he just starts to feel at disease.
Speaker 1: He starts to feel anxious. He says, I was shocked
Speaker 1: to find that I mentally use the word afraid up
Speaker 1: till then I tried to pretend that I was feeling
Speaker 1: only distaste or embarrassment, or even boredom, But the mere
Speaker 1: word afraid had let the cat out of the bag.
Speaker 1: I realized now that my emotion was neither more nor less,
Speaker 1: nor other than fear. And so he's met with fear.
Speaker 1: It's a very haunting walk from the train station to
Speaker 1: ransom cottage, and he tarries to talk about why now
Speaker 1: there are at least a couple things going on here.
Speaker 1: One part is that, okay, we know, as the readers
Speaker 1: and Lewis himself would discover soon in the story, that
Speaker 1: one reason for his fear is that he is quite
Speaker 1: literally being haunted. He's being haunted by these bent Eldla,
Speaker 1: by servants of the devil that are trying to keep
Speaker 1: him from reaching Ransom's cottage. But also he's just sort
Speaker 1: of dwelling on all of these things that are wrapped
Speaker 1: up in who Ransom is now, and especially his engagement
Speaker 1: with the community of spiritual beings, the Oyarsa of Mars,
Speaker 1: the Ildeala that have continued to visit with Ransom. And
Speaker 1: he finds this all very unnerving because it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a you know, fairy tales becoming real. And when
Speaker 1: fairy tales become real, your understanding of what reality is
Speaker 1: starts to fall apart, and in turn, you start to
Speaker 1: lose a context for who you are and for the
Speaker 1: things that are valuable. As we're going to see in
Speaker 1: conversations toward the end of the story, you start to
Speaker 1: lose your center, you start to lose perspective over what
Speaker 1: is actually valuable, and you start to enter into the
Speaker 1: perilous realm, as Tolkien would call it. This is the
Speaker 1: realm where the categories that you have are upset and
Speaker 1: you have to find a new path and you have
Speaker 1: to find out how this fairy telle logic works. So
Speaker 1: what is real? How do you even operate in this
Speaker 1: kind of setting? And so not only is he being haunted,
Speaker 1: but he's thinking about what it means to live in
Speaker 1: this strange new world that he's find himself in. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to refrain from reading long passages in
Speaker 1: this video because well, you've already read this yourself, but
Speaker 1: I do want to read this because it gets out
Speaker 1: an important theme that we see throughout Lewis as well
Speaker 1: as perhaps particularly in the Ransom series. So Lewis writes,
Speaker 1: The truth was that all I heard about them, that is,
Speaker 1: the Eldela, served to connect two things which one's mind
Speaker 1: tends to keep separate, and that connecting gave one a
Speaker 1: sort of shock. We tend to think about non human
Speaker 1: intelligences and two distinct categories, which we labeled normal and supernatural, respectively.
Speaker 1: We think in one mood of mister Wells's Martians or
Speaker 1: his Selenites. In quite a different mood, we let our
Speaker 1: minds loose on the possibility of angels, ghost fairies and
Speaker 1: the like. But the very moment we are compelled to
Speaker 1: recognize a creature in either class is real, the distinction
Speaker 1: begins to get blurred, and when it is a creature
Speaker 1: like an Eldell, the distinction vanishes all together. These things
Speaker 1: were not animals to that extent one had to classify
Speaker 1: them with the second group. That they had some kind
Speaker 1: of a material vehicle whose presence could in principle be
Speaker 1: scientifically verified. To that extent they belonged to the first group.
Speaker 1: The distinction between natural and supernatural in fact broke down,
Speaker 1: and when it had done so, one realized how great
Speaker 1: a comfort it had been, how it had eased the
Speaker 1: burden of intolerable strangeness which the universe imposes on us
Speaker 1: by dividing it into two halves and encouraging the mind
Speaker 1: never to think of both in the same context. What
Speaker 1: price we may have paid for this comfort, in the
Speaker 1: way of false security and accept a confusion of thought
Speaker 1: is another matter, and I think I talked about this
Speaker 1: in the Out of the Silent Planet video where in
Speaker 1: on Stories Lewis talks about how there are really at
Speaker 1: least two different kinds of fears we can have. We
Speaker 1: can have a fear of what something might do to us,
Speaker 1: but we can also just have a fear that something
Speaker 1: is that the very existence of something, you know, say
Speaker 1: a ghost, a fairy, maybe even an angel. Right, even
Speaker 1: those of us who might say confessionally we believe in angels,
Speaker 1: that's a very different thing than actually believing that angels
Speaker 1: are in the primary world, That there are spiritual realities
Speaker 1: taking place around us and in the cosmos that we
Speaker 1: can't neatly classify into our material understanding. Because again, even
Speaker 1: those of us who aren't necessarily materialists philosophically speaking, very
Speaker 1: much live like we are a lot of the times.
Speaker 1: If we're honest and so coming to terms with the
Speaker 1: fact that there really are things that we can't neatly
Speaker 1: categorize in material terms. That is kind of upsetting. It's
Speaker 1: upsetting to our understanding of reality. It's upsetting to our
Speaker 1: understanding what's really going on, of what is valuable, of
Speaker 1: kind of where the center of things is to be found.
Speaker 1: But Lewis is constantly trying to upset this In Planets Imperiled,
Speaker 1: David Downing says, but Lewis wants to subvert the reader's
Speaker 1: certainty about the barriers between the natural and supernatural, between
Speaker 1: myth and history. He is hoping that after finishing the
Speaker 1: Ransom trilogy, readers may give every peculiar slant of light
Speaker 1: a second look and think, perhap, why that's only the
Speaker 1: moonlight flittering through the trees and yet for a moment,
Speaker 1: And so Lewis wants to give us this enchanted worldview
Speaker 1: where where maybe things are not always exactly as they seem.
Speaker 1: Maybe there is a richness to this cosmos that does
Speaker 1: not fit neatly within the boundaries of our typical ways
Speaker 1: of understanding. Remember, the rebble of fairy is the world
Speaker 1: that contains things that live kind of on the borders
Speaker 1: of perception, the borders of understanding, and maybe, just maybe
Speaker 1: we live in a kind of fairy tale that our
Speaker 1: modernist presuppositions are simply unable to see. And then Donnie
Speaker 1: goes on to say throughout the Ransom trilogy as well
Speaker 1: as the Narnia Chronicles, Lewis's strategy is to make readers
Speaker 1: sense that his fantasy world is more real than they
Speaker 1: might have supposed, and that their quote real world is
Speaker 1: more filled with a fantastic than they might have supposed,
Speaker 1: including this week's module essay Myth Became Fact, which pairs
Speaker 1: very well with Tolkien's essay on Fairy Stories, and when
Speaker 1: she says that the Gospel contains a fairy story. But
Speaker 1: what Tolkien and Lewis are both getting out there is
Speaker 1: not saying that the Gospel isn't real. What they're saying
Speaker 1: is that the Gospel is the true fairy story. It
Speaker 1: is the ultimate melding of the supernatural and the natural,
Speaker 1: of the spectacular and the mundane. It is the myth
Speaker 1: that became fact in history. So Lewis talks about how
Speaker 1: there are many different pagan myths of some god dying
Speaker 1: and rising, who knows when and who knows where But
Speaker 1: what we get in Christianity is the real thing. We
Speaker 1: get the transcendent God who enters into the natural sphere
Speaker 1: at a specific point, at a specific time, in a
Speaker 1: specific place, and say, what we have here is the
Speaker 1: ultimate melding of the fantastical and the mundane, the supernatural
Speaker 1: and the natural. And so if you're operating under the
Speaker 1: Christian worldview that always has, then we should absolutely have
Speaker 1: enchanted vision. We should absolutely recognize that the natural world
Speaker 1: is by no means simply natural, that the natural world
Speaker 1: is nested into a supernatural reality, and that that is
Speaker 1: the most real thing. And then continue this theme about
Speaker 1: how simply the existence of something might be upsetting might
Speaker 1: cause a certain mood within us, regardless of what it
Speaker 1: actually does. On stories, Lewis says the dangerousness of the
Speaker 1: giant is, though important, secondary. In some folk tales, we
Speaker 1: meet giants who are not dangerous, but they still affect
Speaker 1: us much the same way. A good giant is legitimate,
Speaker 1: but he would be twenty tons of living earth, shaking oxymoron,
Speaker 1: the intolerable pressure, the sense of something older, wilder, and
Speaker 1: more earthly than humanity, which still cleave to him, and
Speaker 1: he goes on to say that there's a certain reality
Speaker 1: to giants, that there should be such a thing that
Speaker 1: instills with us the kind of mood, the kind of feelings,
Speaker 1: the kind ofs that a giant would instill within us.
Speaker 1: And for that reason, there is a kind of reality
Speaker 1: to the idea of giants. Regardless of whether or not
Speaker 1: you know factual giants ever lived, the idea of a
Speaker 1: giant is something real. It is something that should impose
Speaker 1: a certain mood, a certain feeling upon us. And so
Speaker 1: I just bring this in to talk about how again,
Speaker 1: the existence of something, regardless of what it does, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's good or bad. In the case of giants,
Speaker 1: simply the existence of a giant, the supposed existence of
Speaker 1: a giant, should do something within us, and that is
Speaker 1: a real and that is a natural relation that it causes.
Speaker 1: And so too with the Eldeala and with Lewis. All right,
Speaker 1: So Lewis or the Lewis character eventually makes it to
Speaker 1: Ransom's collarage, and he stumbles around to the dark because
Speaker 1: you know, Ransom is in't there right now, and he
Speaker 1: trips over this strange object, which at first he can't
Speaker 1: really see well in the dark, but eventually he realizes
Speaker 1: it is coffin shaped, and so this introduces this death
Speaker 1: theme that death is going to play an important role.
Speaker 1: Now take note of the fact that Ransom is being
Speaker 1: commissioned by the oarsa of Mars Mars, who is the
Speaker 1: patron influence over both warriors and over martyrs. Right you
Speaker 1: can even see Mars the word Mars in the word martyr.
Speaker 1: And so this is the influence that gives resolute strength,
Speaker 1: either in victory in combat or in death in a
Speaker 1: noble martyrdom standing against the bent forces that are working
Speaker 1: against you. In either case, your positive relationship with the
Speaker 1: Martian influence is going to lead you to maintain rigid
Speaker 1: straightness against a bent world. And so he is going
Speaker 1: to both engage in combat, but also he is going
Speaker 1: to experience a kind of death. Symbolically speaking, Ransom is
Speaker 1: going to die on Perilandra and be born again, and
Speaker 1: in so doing he is going to give life to
Speaker 1: Peralandra itself. And we'll see that as we move forward.
Speaker 1: But right now we just have this as a anticipation
Speaker 1: of things that are going to happen. And another thing
Speaker 1: I should say on this, because this is actually going
Speaker 1: to introduce a theme that we're going to see throughout
Speaker 1: Lewis's stories, especially when we get to till we have Faces.
Speaker 1: And I can also think it's an application here with
Speaker 1: lion Witch and the wardrobe as well as the Silver Chair.
Speaker 1: But more on that when we get there. But for now,
Speaker 1: what I want to point out here is the fact
Speaker 1: that Okay, so Perilandra is the planet. It is the
Speaker 1: influence of love of desire. Remember what we talked about
Speaker 1: with medieval cosmology here, and so she is the plane
Speaker 1: of love, of desire, of comfort. She is a feminine ideal.
Speaker 1: And what we see here is that ransom commissioned by Mars,
Speaker 1: which is the masculine ideal. Right, He is going to
Speaker 1: be received into Perilandra, just as a coffin is received
Speaker 1: into the Earth. And now I don't want to get
Speaker 1: too weird with this. I don't want to get to
Speaker 1: to Freudian with this, but as we move on, we're
Speaker 1: actually going to see that we're going to move in
Speaker 1: a very Unfreudian direction. But I do want to emphasize
Speaker 1: the fact that he is being sent by Mars, the
Speaker 1: masculine planet, to be received into Venus, even as a
Speaker 1: coffin is received into the ground, and we'll just leave
Speaker 1: that there for now, but I want to at least
Speaker 1: highlight that theme here on the introductory level. But now
Speaker 1: we'll keep moving now. As Ransom is explaining to the
Speaker 1: Lewis character that he's been commissioned for this task that
Speaker 1: he doesn't really understand right, he's being sent to Perilandra.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really know why. And he anticipates that the
Speaker 1: Lewis character might think that, you know, Ransom sees himself
Speaker 1: with some kind of meglomania, that you know that he's
Speaker 1: something really special. And Ransom pushes it back against that,
Speaker 1: and he says, don't imagine I've been selected to go
Speaker 1: to Perilandra because I'm anyone in particular. One can never see,
Speaker 1: or not till long afterwards, why anyone was selected for
Speaker 1: any job, and when one does, it is usually some
Speaker 1: reason that leaves no room for vanity. Certainly it is
Speaker 1: never for what the man himself would have regarded as
Speaker 1: his chief qualifications. I rather fancy that I'm being sent
Speaker 1: because those two black guards who kidnapped me and took
Speaker 1: me to Malacandra did something which they never intended, namely,
Speaker 1: gave a human being a chance to learn that language,
Speaker 1: and so part of the reason why he's being sent
Speaker 1: to Perlandra, part of the reason why he's qualified is
Speaker 1: because he knows Old Solar right. He knows the language
Speaker 1: that has spoken on other planets. He knows the language
Speaker 1: of the heaven. But this isn't something that he acquired
Speaker 1: by himself. It is not something he possibly could have
Speaker 1: acquired by himself unless he were kidnapped and brought to
Speaker 1: Malacandra to begin with. And this is something that happened
Speaker 1: on one hand because bent men Weston and Divine kidnapped him
Speaker 1: and brought him there against his will. But ultimately even
Speaker 1: that was an active divine providence working through bent souls.
Speaker 1: Remember I talked about in the previous video how when
Speaker 1: Ransom first encountered Weston, Divine Divine gives us a bye
Speaker 1: Joe when he recognizes who Ransom is, And that is
Speaker 1: a key to the reader that ultimately what's happening here
Speaker 1: is not just blind happenstance. Ransom didn't stumble anywhere in
Speaker 1: the grand scope of things, nor was it entirely random
Speaker 1: that Western End Divine happened to kidnap him. No, Ultimately, Jove,
Speaker 1: Jupiter Christ himself was orchestrating all of these things, using
Speaker 1: even bent Hanau in order to make a straight line
Speaker 1: that would bring Ransom into the great celestial dance and
Speaker 1: in so doing allow him to bring others into that
Speaker 1: dance as well. And so there is a straight line
Speaker 1: that's happening, even working through bent souls. And this makes
Speaker 1: me think of the Silmarillion, and if you don't know
Speaker 1: your Silmarillion, and if you don't know your Simarillion, and
Speaker 1: specifically the delay, the beginning section of the Silmarilion, which
Speaker 1: tells Tolkien's creation myth. Right, you have all of the
Speaker 1: iinor you have the gods. You know. To stick with
Speaker 1: our study, maybe we can call him Oyarsu. They are
Speaker 1: all singing songs together in harmony, in praise of Eru,
Speaker 1: that the god figure, and in so doing they are
Speaker 1: laying the foundation of what will be the created material order.
Speaker 1: But Melcor, who is the Satan figure, he starts to
Speaker 1: sing his own tune. He tries to bring the music
Speaker 1: in a different direction, one that ultimately centers around him. Right,
Speaker 1: he is the progressive figure. He is the Satan figure.
Speaker 1: But Eru, he stops the music and he addresses Melcor
Speaker 1: and he says, and thou, Melcor, shalt see that no
Speaker 1: theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source
Speaker 1: in me, Nor can any alter the music in my
Speaker 1: Despite for he that attempeth this shall prove but mine
Speaker 1: instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he
Speaker 1: himself hath not imagined. And so Melcor keeps trying to
Speaker 1: sing these discordant tunes. He's trying to disrupt the harmony.
Speaker 1: But Eru, the great Conductor, keeps moving the music and
Speaker 1: incorporating what Melcor is doing in order to create something
Speaker 1: even more beautiful against the will, against the intentions of Melcor.
Speaker 1: And so we see that God is ultimately in charge,
Speaker 1: using even broken, even bent, even sinful intentions, and he's
Speaker 1: reworking them, bringing them around to serve his good purposes.
Speaker 1: And so I think we see that playing out in Ransom.
Speaker 1: That Malelda worked through Oyarsa, worked through worked through Western
Speaker 1: and Divine in order to get to Ransom, and of
Speaker 1: course through Ransom he's going to work to redeem, he's
Speaker 1: going to work to glorify Perilandra as well as everything
Speaker 1: else that Ransom does afterward. And then Ransom goes on
Speaker 1: to explain that what he's being called to do is
Speaker 1: really not that different than what any of us are
Speaker 1: called to do. As he says, but when you come
Speaker 1: to think of it, is it odder than what all
Speaker 1: of us have to do every day. When the Bible
Speaker 1: used that very expression about fighting with principalities and powers
Speaker 1: and depraved hypersomatic beings at great heights, our translation is
Speaker 1: very misleading at that point, by the way, it meant
Speaker 1: that quite ordinary people were to do the fighting. And
Speaker 1: so this is the Biblical charge that not just the
Speaker 1: great empower, but that you are called to fight with demons.
Speaker 1: As crazy as that sounds, but that is exactly what
Speaker 1: we are told to do in scripture. And that is
Speaker 1: exactly what Ransom is said out to do. And so
Speaker 1: while his tale is more mythical, it seems to be
Speaker 1: more extraordinary, the essence of what's happening is not all
Speaker 1: that different than what you and I are called to
Speaker 1: do according to scripture. And then I kind of already
Speaker 1: talked about this idea, but I think it's worth bringing
Speaker 1: up in Deeper Heaven. Christina Hail says Ransom's role in
Speaker 1: Peralandra demonstrates his growth from a simple pilgrim to a
Speaker 1: martial prophet. Everything he learned on Malacandra, from the language
Speaker 1: to the martial influence, had prepared him to take up
Speaker 1: the profit mantle. And so again he's really going to
Speaker 1: be a stand in for Malacandra, or for the Malachandrian spirit,
Speaker 1: for the martial influence as he enters into Perilandra. And
Speaker 1: so what we have here is, remember how I talked
Speaker 1: about before that Lewis tends to give us a really
Speaker 1: an upward string of particulars that lead us to a
Speaker 1: universal that lead us up to the realm of being,
Speaker 1: up to capital our reality from the lowercase our realities. Well,
Speaker 1: ultimately that's what's happening here. What we're going to see
Speaker 1: play out between Ransom and the Lady of Peralandra really
Speaker 1: are particular interactions that are going to spiral upward to
Speaker 1: a greater reality, a greater kind of stability. And perhaps
Speaker 1: we chiefly see this actually in Perilandra, considering the fact
Speaker 1: that they spend most of the story on these moving islands.
Speaker 1: And then it ends in Glory on the Stable Island,
Speaker 1: where Ransom receives his chief revelation about what's really going
Speaker 1: on in the cosmos. And so we get this movement
Speaker 1: from shifting particulars, from moving shadows to form, to universal
Speaker 1: to capital our realities to the ideals. And so this
Speaker 1: is not just a story about what Ransom is doing
Speaker 1: on Perilandra. Ultimately, this is a story about the relationship
Speaker 1: between Mars and Venus, between Malcandra and Perilandra, and in
Speaker 1: turn their relationship is about a higher reality. And so
Speaker 1: again it's spirals all the way up until eventually we
Speaker 1: get to God himself. And once we get that trajectory straight,
Speaker 1: then everything between where we are and that endpoint that
Speaker 1: be a typic vision itself becomes glorified. This is a
Speaker 1: very medieval idea, and I've talked about this before that
Speaker 1: when you have your vision straight and you're able to
Speaker 1: see what it is at the end of the chain
Speaker 1: of being, than everything between where we are now and
Speaker 1: that chief end of all things becomes glorified. As an
Speaker 1: extension of that end of that reality, everything gains purpose.
Speaker 1: And so that's the kind of vision that we're meant
Speaker 1: to have here, a vision that's looking upward and outward,
Speaker 1: a vision that continually moves us further up and further
Speaker 1: in to reality. We'll talk about that more as we
Speaker 1: continue on. Okay, so he hops in his confin and
Speaker 1: then Malcandra himself, the oarsa of Mars shoots him off
Speaker 1: to Perilandra. And I should bring up also the fact
Speaker 1: that Venus is closer than Mars. And so we see
Speaker 1: here that the conflict, that the battle is moving closer
Speaker 1: and closer to Earth, and of course that's where that
Speaker 1: hideous strength will focus. Now, as he's arriving in Peralandra,
Speaker 1: we get this description of the descent, which is very
Speaker 1: different than the description we get of the descent into Malcandra.
Speaker 1: Remember when he's descending into Malacandra. It's violent, it's sickening,
Speaker 1: we're told it it felt like pregnancy sickness by much worse.
Speaker 1: And that's because they were coming in contact with something
Speaker 1: that made them feel heavy. It made them feel burdened.
Speaker 1: The ground was rough, it was hard, It's like hitting rock.
Speaker 1: And this is because the Martian influence is the masculine.
Speaker 1: It is hard, it is firm, it is harsh. Remember
Speaker 1: when Malcandra said that he would have just disembodied all
Speaker 1: of them if he had the authority to do so,
Speaker 1: And so this was a harsh influence. This is a
Speaker 1: masculine influence. This is a warrior influence, whereas Perlandra. However,
Speaker 1: it's very different. Rainsom doesn't exactly land on Perlandra as
Speaker 1: much as Peralandra receives ransom, right, he just sort of
Speaker 1: sinks down. And then we're told that these casket that
Speaker 1: he was in fades, and so we really see that
Speaker 1: he was received by Perilandra rather than landing on her,
Speaker 1: She welcomes him in. And again I don't want to
Speaker 1: get too Freudian with this, but I do think that
Speaker 1: there is some sexual imagery here that isn't pointing to
Speaker 1: something like sex, is actually pointing to something higher. But
Speaker 1: I do think that there is some of that symbolism
Speaker 1: at play here when you look at the description of
Speaker 1: how he, this agent of Mars, is being received into Perilandra.
Speaker 1: So one hand, he's being in a casket that's being
Speaker 1: laid into the earth that is receiving him. The same time,
Speaker 1: I think that there is some kind of interplay here
Speaker 1: between the masculine and the feminine, and I think these
Speaker 1: are ideas that need to be brought together and that
Speaker 1: will be brought together as we move forward. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I should have mentioned this at the beginning.
Speaker 1: There's so much going on in Perilandra as far as
Speaker 1: the story goes, but I mean philosophically, symbolically, mythologically that
Speaker 1: I'm going to save some of the more abstract conversation,
Speaker 1: things like things about gender, things about exactly how Lewis
Speaker 1: is using mythology within his Christian framework, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that I'm going to lump together into a separate
Speaker 1: video that I'm going to provide for you after that
Speaker 1: hideous strength. That way we can pull on themes throughout
Speaker 1: the books, and I think we'll have what we need
Speaker 1: for a very orderly presentation that's going to make a
Speaker 1: lot of things very clear. And so there's some things
Speaker 1: in Peralandra that I'm not really going to touch or
Speaker 1: I'm at least only going to hint at in this
Speaker 1: video that I'm going to bring into a broader level
Speaker 1: of conversation once we finished the Ransom series. And so
Speaker 1: i just want you to know that that I'm going
Speaker 1: to be hinting at a lot of things already done
Speaker 1: that I will be talking about in more detail at
Speaker 1: another time. So just keep that in mind. Well, anyways, Okay,
Speaker 1: he's received into Perilandra, we're told, unlike as he was
Speaker 1: landing on Mars, when he felt sick and heavy and burdened,
Speaker 1: and it is always a bad experience. Now we're told
Speaker 1: that he's feeling excessive pleasure, which speaks to the particular
Speaker 1: influence of Perilandra. Right, this is a place of sweetness,
Speaker 1: of pleasure. This is a place of beauty, of love.
Speaker 1: Malcantra is that which asserts itself, Perilandra is that which receives.
Speaker 1: And so there's a sweetness, there's a pleasure, there is
Speaker 1: a welcoming here. And what really makes this strange for
Speaker 1: him is that he has excessive pleasure, but he doesn't
Speaker 1: have guilt. Typically on Earth, right, when we are experiencing
Speaker 1: excess of pleasure, a lot of times there is something
Speaker 1: sinful wrapped up into that. But that's not what we
Speaker 1: see here. What we see is here is pleasure in
Speaker 1: the right context. And I think it's also worth pointing
Speaker 1: out the fact that you know Ransom was to not
Speaker 1: wear clothes, right, who is naked for this entire trip,
Speaker 1: and brought together what we see here, it makes me
Speaker 1: think of Genesis. Therefore, man leaves his father and his
Speaker 1: mother in this context, perhaps his father's Malachandra, and perhaps
Speaker 1: his mother is Tholchandra. And he clings to his wife
Speaker 1: and they become one flesh. And the man and his
Speaker 1: wife were both naked and were not ashamed. And that's
Speaker 1: exactly what we see playing out here that Ransom, as
Speaker 1: he enters into the warmth of Perilandra, he is clinging
Speaker 1: to his wife, he is clinging to love, and they
Speaker 1: are becoming one flesh. And again his caskets fading away.
Speaker 1: He and Perilandra are sort of melding together, and they
Speaker 1: are both naked, and they are not ashamed. And so
Speaker 1: we see some Eden imagery playing out here. In fact,
Speaker 1: one of his letters, Lewis talks about how the Queen
Speaker 1: of Perlandra is supposed to be some kind of mix
Speaker 1: between Eve and the Virgin Mary. Now ran some encounters
Speaker 1: the Queen of Perlandra. They have some conversation. One of
Speaker 1: the first conversations they have is about this idea of
Speaker 1: receiving the wave that is sent to you. She says,
Speaker 1: you think times have lengths, A night is always a knight,
Speaker 1: whatever you do in it, as from this tree to
Speaker 1: that is always so many paces, whether you take them
Speaker 1: quickly or slowly. I suppose that is true in a way,
Speaker 1: but the waves do not always come at equal distances.
Speaker 1: I see that you come from a wise world. If
Speaker 1: this is wise, I have never done it before, stepping
Speaker 1: out of life into the alongside and looking at oneself,
Speaker 1: living as if one were not alive. Do they all
Speaker 1: do that in your world? Piebald? Briefly going to highlight
Speaker 1: this piebald nickname that he receives. This is a reference
Speaker 1: to the fact that he is sunburned on one side
Speaker 1: and pale on the other side as a result of
Speaker 1: one side of him facing the sun during his journey.
Speaker 1: And I think that this connects to the dream that
Speaker 1: he had back and out of the silent planet. I
Speaker 1: remember when he was straddling the wall and he had
Speaker 1: one leg in the light, one side in the darkness,
Speaker 1: one leg in the known, one leg in the unknown.
Speaker 1: And so this is continuing that theme here, the fact
Speaker 1: that Ransom straddles to realities. He is a bridge. You know,
Speaker 1: a little bit ago we said that he was a prophet. Well,
Speaker 1: he's also a priest of sorts, and we're going to
Speaker 1: see that play out even more in the next book.
Speaker 1: He is a bridge between Earth and the heavens. He
Speaker 1: is bringing things together in himself, and so Ransom seems
Speaker 1: so Ransom sees time happening objectively, whereas the lady experiences
Speaker 1: time subjectively, not in the sense that time depends on her,
Speaker 1: but she experiences time rather than looking at time. I
Speaker 1: think that's the quintessential difference. You know. Whenever she learns something,
Speaker 1: she says that she's getting older, whereas she was younger
Speaker 1: before she knew something, And so's something about the expansion
Speaker 1: of knowledge, the expansion of understanding time is relative to
Speaker 1: internal progress or internal movements, rather than external things happening.
Speaker 1: And so she says that she experiences time, she experiences life,
Speaker 1: whereas Ransom is leading her to look at life, to
Speaker 1: look at things changing, rather than to focus on the
Speaker 1: change that you yourself are experiencing, or rather your relationship
Speaker 1: to the change around you. And so she refers to
Speaker 1: this as looking into the alongside and looking at oneself
Speaker 1: rather than actually living. And this points me to Lewis's
Speaker 1: essay found in God on the Dock called Meditation in
Speaker 1: a tool Shed, in which she says, I was standing
Speaker 1: today in the dark tool shed. The sun was shining
Speaker 1: outside and through the crack at the top of the
Speaker 1: door that came a sunbeam from where I stood. That
Speaker 1: beam of light, with its specks of dust floating in it,
Speaker 1: was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else
Speaker 1: was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not
Speaker 1: seeing things by it. Then I moved so that the
Speaker 1: beam fell in my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished.
Speaker 1: I saw no tool shed, and above all, no beam.
Speaker 1: Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the
Speaker 1: top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches
Speaker 1: of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety odd million
Speaker 1: miles away the sun. Looking along the beam and looking
Speaker 1: at the beam are very different experiences, and so the
Speaker 1: lady only knew how to look along the beam. She
Speaker 1: experienced reality rather than studying reality abstractly. And in this essay,
Speaker 1: Lewis goes on to point out the fact that that
Speaker 1: in our modern world, we tend to prioritize looking at
Speaker 1: the beam, where we want to understand the phenomenon that
Speaker 1: is happening in material terms, rather than looking along the
Speaker 1: beam and experiencing the glories that the beam provides for us,
Speaker 1: And so we tend to disconnect ourselves from actually experiencing reality,
Speaker 1: from actually embracing reality. Whereas the lady, led by the
Speaker 1: influence of Perilandra, is somebody who naturally embraces reality, but
Speaker 1: Ransom here inadvertently causes her to step aside from that
Speaker 1: and to judge reality rather than embracing reality. And this
Speaker 1: is a thread that the un man is going to
Speaker 1: pick up and take even further. And then Ransom learns
Speaker 1: a little bit about redentive history. Here he learns that
Speaker 1: there will never again be any hanow like those of Malacandra.
Speaker 1: But moving forward, any newnw will take the form of
Speaker 1: humanity because of the incarnation, because the beloved became man,
Speaker 1: how should reason any world take on another form? And
Speaker 1: you know, first Ransom doesn't like this very much because
Speaker 1: I mean, well, he liked the diversity, he liked the
Speaker 1: creatures of Malacandra. He wishes that there were more such things.
Speaker 1: And I can't help but to think that this has
Speaker 1: some relation to Lewis's own appreciation for paganism, which he
Speaker 1: says that he says that on an aesthetic level, he actually
Speaker 1: prefers pagan mythology to you know, Christian mythology. You know,
Speaker 1: he likes Greek mythology more. He likes Celtic mythology even
Speaker 1: more in Norse mythology most of all. However, he sees
Speaker 1: the most beauty in Christianity because it is a true myth.
Speaker 1: But that beauty is tied to its truth on an
Speaker 1: aesthetic level. I mean, he does have some appreciation for paganism,
Speaker 1: for the old times, the things that came before. I
Speaker 1: can't help but to think that there is something of
Speaker 1: that going on in this conversation. But nonetheless, Ransom does
Speaker 1: receive the wave that is sent to him, which is
Speaker 1: exactly what he is supposed to do. You receive the
Speaker 1: wave that Melelda sends your way. You don't fight against it.
Speaker 1: You don't determine the currents, you don't send any wave back,
Speaker 1: you don't create the waves. Your obligation is to receive
Speaker 1: the wave that is sent to you. And then the
Speaker 1: same thing about Eldela. There are no Eldeala on Parilan,
Speaker 1: and the lady brings up the facts that that the
Speaker 1: Aldeala are part of an older reality, that they are,
Speaker 1: that they were on Earth, and they used to have
Speaker 1: more power on Earth, but ever since the incarnation they've
Speaker 1: been overthrown they don't have the same power that they
Speaker 1: used to, even though they do linger still this leaves
Speaker 1: me to think that, Okay, maybe we are correct and
Speaker 1: identifying the oersu as angels, but maybe the Aldeala are
Speaker 1: something like fairies that used to have more of an
Speaker 1: influence but have been largely overthrown. And you know, even
Speaker 1: still they're around, but don't have the same power that
Speaker 1: they used to. And I think that this is going
Speaker 1: to tie into some of what we're going to see
Speaker 1: in that hideous strength. But I'm going to save this
Speaker 1: for my broad level mythology and philosophy video, and so
Speaker 1: we'll just let that linger for now. But to the
Speaker 1: specific point at hand that I'm kind of drawing on,
Speaker 1: this points to the fact that things change, things are
Speaker 1: moving in a different direction, and what we're called to
Speaker 1: do is not to hang on to the wave that
Speaker 1: we want the most. What we're called to do is
Speaker 1: is to hang onto the one who sends the waves.
Speaker 1: This very much makes you think of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy,
Speaker 1: in which Boethius talks about how we aren't to attach
Speaker 1: ourselves to changing fortunes, but we are to develop the
Speaker 1: appropriate relationship to fortune itself and ultimately to providence itself.
Speaker 1: And so that seems to be going on here now
Speaker 1: to again hint at some of the broad level stuff
Speaker 1: that's going on on the philosophical and on the gender area. Tinadrill,
Speaker 1: the lady says, but how can one wish any of
Speaker 1: those waves not to reach us, which Maleldal is rolling
Speaker 1: toward us? And so the waves that Maleldal sends are
Speaker 1: going to be sent. They are going to come our way.
Speaker 1: We simply have an obligation to receive them in the
Speaker 1: appropriate manner. This makes you think of something that we're
Speaker 1: going to get from that hideous strength. And forgive me
Speaker 1: for referencing a book that we haven't yet gotten to
Speaker 1: in our study, but I'm just going to do it
Speaker 1: this one time. Ransom in that hideous strength says, what
Speaker 1: is above and beyond all things is so masculine that
Speaker 1: we are all feminine in relation to it. Now, this
Speaker 1: does not at all disrupt the relationship between the masculine
Speaker 1: and the feminine. It actually highlights it and points to
Speaker 1: the fact that, Okay, melel Dil is the chief masculine influence.
Speaker 1: In the fact that he asserts himself he is strong,
Speaker 1: and he cannot be bent. He is resolute, and he
Speaker 1: is steadfast, and he is the one who initiates. And
Speaker 1: so he sends forth the waves, and all now have
Speaker 1: an obligation to receive the wave. And so again we
Speaker 1: get some of this masculine feminine relationship playing out here.
Speaker 1: One sends, the other receives, one pursues, the other is pursued.
Speaker 1: Now after this we see the next morning Star. And
Speaker 1: remember the morning Star is both venus as well as
Speaker 1: a title for Satan, and so we see this play
Speaker 1: out as written. Then, quite involuntarily, he added in English,
Speaker 1: by jove, what was that? She also had exclaimed, something
Speaker 1: like a shooting star seemed to have streaked across the sky,
Speaker 1: far away on their left, and some seconds later an
Speaker 1: indeterminate noise reached their ears. What was that? Asked again,
Speaker 1: this time an old solar. Something has fallen out of
Speaker 1: deep heaven, said the lady. Her face showed wonder and curiosity.
Speaker 1: But on Earth we so rarely see these emotions without
Speaker 1: some admixture of defensive fear that her expression seems strange
Speaker 1: to him, And of course, this description of him shooting
Speaker 1: across the sky falling out of the heavens. You know,
Speaker 1: it makes me think of Isaiah, how you have fallen
Speaker 1: from heaven, Oh morning star, sun of the dawn. And
Speaker 1: so here we have Weston, we have the un Man,
Speaker 1: we have this devil falling from the sky, falling from
Speaker 1: the heavens. Or Christ also says that he saw Satan
Speaker 1: fall through the earth as a streak of lightning, which
Speaker 1: very much points to this imagery that we're getting here.
Speaker 1: And with the arrival of Weston, we get what I
Speaker 1: like to call the cult of progress. We get the
Speaker 1: progressivism that we saw in Wes and out of the
Speaker 1: Silent Planet really brought into a religious framing. And this
Speaker 1: is going to play out throughout Perilandra as well as
Speaker 1: into that hideous strength. And I put a lot of
Speaker 1: text on the PowerPoint so you can download and look
Speaker 1: at it. I'm not going to read all of it
Speaker 1: for the video, but I do want to point out
Speaker 1: some things here. So he talks about how as a physicist,
Speaker 1: he focused on the conflict between man and his nonhuman environment,
Speaker 1: but now he's plunged into biology, and now he's concerned
Speaker 1: with life, with the relationship between the organic and the inorganic,
Speaker 1: and what he develops from this is an evolutionary philosophy,
Speaker 1: not just a scientific belief in the process of evolution,
Speaker 1: but an evolution based philosophy that very much ties into Hegelianism.
Speaker 1: This idea that the most fundamental reality is something like
Speaker 1: reality creating itself across time. It's this idea that there
Speaker 1: is a life force, that there is a cosmic spirituality
Speaker 1: that is continually moving closer and closer to Heaven, to utopia,
Speaker 1: to paradise, that God is in a sense creating himself
Speaker 1: over time through the unfolding of cosmic history, and perhaps
Speaker 1: especially so through the unfolding of rational life and the
Speaker 1: development of reason. Hegel used to talk about how history
Speaker 1: is the process of the absolute discovering itself or becoming
Speaker 1: conscious of itself. Well, this kind of philosophy is definitely
Speaker 1: at play with Weston right now, and he says, I
Speaker 1: saw almost at once that I could admit no break,
Speaker 1: no discontinuity in the unfolding of the cosmic process. I
Speaker 1: became convinced believer in emergent evolution. All is one, the
Speaker 1: stuff of mind, the unconsciously purposeful dynamism is present from
Speaker 1: the very beginning. And so again this idea that all
Speaker 1: of reality is one thing that's discovering itself across time,
Speaker 1: that evolution is moving in a positive direction, that is
Speaker 1: continually making things better and better and better than what
Speaker 1: came before. And this is a you know, he refers
Speaker 1: to this as something of a break from his previous philosophy,
Speaker 1: but this really is his philosophy in Out of the
Speaker 1: Silent Planet, right when Oyarsa challenges him to even define
Speaker 1: what he means by a man, and he doesn't really know.
Speaker 1: All he means is what it is that man produces.
Speaker 1: And so this is an intentional movement away from metaphysics,
Speaker 1: from anything like a transcendent ideal. This is moving away
Speaker 1: from a fixed reality that we are to conform ourselves to,
Speaker 1: such as Plato would give us, and this is instead
Speaker 1: a movement into the unknown, with the unknown being just
Speaker 1: accepted as necessarily good. This is the philosophy of Satan.
Speaker 1: It is changed for the sake of change, progress for
Speaker 1: the sake of progress, without any clear understanding of what
Speaker 1: it is that we're progressing into. And to change itself
Speaker 1: becomes good. He goes on, Man in himself is nothing.
Speaker 1: The forward movements of life, the growing spirituality is everything.
Speaker 1: I say to you quite freely, Ransom, that I should
Speaker 1: have been wrong in liquidating the Malchandrians. Who's a mere
Speaker 1: prejudice that made me prefer our race to theirs. To
Speaker 1: spread spirituality, not to spread the human race, is henceforth
Speaker 1: my mission. This sets the coping stone on my career.
Speaker 1: I worked first for myself, then for science, then for humanity,
Speaker 1: but now at last for spirit itself. I might say,
Speaker 1: borrowing language which will be more familiar to you the
Speaker 1: Holy Spirit. And so now he's trying to couch this
Speaker 1: in Christian theological terms. He can try to argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, what he's saying is basically what Ransom believes.
Speaker 1: That they're on the same page here, and this kind
Speaker 1: of philosophy, well, maybe not put in such explicit terms.
Speaker 1: It's very much alive today. Right Whenever someone talks about
Speaker 1: they want to be on the right side of history, well,
Speaker 1: that then implies that history itself is alive. The history
Speaker 1: itself has a right side and a wrong side. And
Speaker 1: the question of okay, how do we know what's right
Speaker 1: and what's wrong, Well, the answer, I suppose would be, well,
Speaker 1: whatever comes next is right and is the standard by
Speaker 1: which we judge what came before, and so the progress
Speaker 1: of history itself becomes our standard for the right and
Speaker 1: wrong side of history. Movement itself is simply good. And
Speaker 1: so that philosophy is actually rampant in our world today,
Speaker 1: whether it's embraced consciously or unconsciously. And I think the
Speaker 1: most diabolical part of all of this is that then
Speaker 1: he tries to pass us off as essentially Christianity, the
Speaker 1: same Christianity that Ransom has. And I think that so
Speaker 1: much of Weston's philosophy, so much of modern and postmodern philosophy,
Speaker 1: is contained very well in this hymn that we start
Speaker 1: this video off. C. S. Lewis's evolutionary hymn, which you've
Speaker 1: already heard, but let's go through the lyrics here, and
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sing it. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: read it for you. Lead us evolution, lead us up
Speaker 1: the futures endless stare chop us, change us, proad us
Speaker 1: wed us. Force. Diagnation is despair, groping, guessing, yet progressing
Speaker 1: lead us. Nobody knows where wrong or justice, joy or
Speaker 1: sorrow in the present? What are they? While there's always
Speaker 1: jam tomorrow, while we tread the onward way, never knowing
Speaker 1: where we're going, we can never go astray to whatever
Speaker 1: variation our posterity may turn Harry, squashy or crustacean bulbous eyed,
Speaker 1: or square of stern, tuester, truthless, milder, ruthless towards that
Speaker 1: unknown God we yearn ask not if it's God or devil. Brethren,
Speaker 1: lest your words imply static norms of good and evil,
Speaker 1: as in Plato throned on high, Such scholastic, inelastic, abstract
Speaker 1: yardsticks we deny far too long, have stages vainly gloss
Speaker 1: great Nature's simple text. He who runs can read it plainly.
Speaker 1: Goodness equals what comes next. By evolving, life is solving
Speaker 1: all the questions we perplexed. Oh, then values mean survival value.
Speaker 1: If our progeny spreads and sponds and licks each rival,
Speaker 1: that will prove its deity far from pleasant by our
Speaker 1: present standards, though it may well be. And so here
Speaker 1: we have it. There is no good or evil. There's
Speaker 1: no standard for judging what ought to be. All there
Speaker 1: is is movement, evolution, change, progress is the ultimate good.
Speaker 1: And so the fact that Weston is trying to pass
Speaker 1: this off as the same kind of spirituality that Ransom
Speaker 1: has is actually the exact opposite, because you know, Christianity
Speaker 1: as well as Platonism, teaches that the ultimate good is stable,
Speaker 1: it is static, it is being and not becoming. It
Speaker 1: is ideal, it is substance, it is not shadow, whereas
Speaker 1: Weston is saying just the opposite, that there is no
Speaker 1: static good and is no static evil. All that there
Speaker 1: is is change, and what we need to do is
Speaker 1: keep changing. And why should we change, well, so we'll
Speaker 1: be different. Why should we be different so that we
Speaker 1: can keep changing? And so evolution becomes this circular reasoning
Speaker 1: where we're trying to move or trying to progress simply
Speaker 1: for the sake of moving, simply for the sake of progressing.
Speaker 1: This is in every real sense a satanic philosophy, and
Speaker 1: it most certainly is the philosophy of Weston, or at
Speaker 1: least the forces behind Western and Son. He continues to
Speaker 1: try to gaslight Ransom into saying that you know, we
Speaker 1: believe basically the same thing, You're just using different terminology,
Speaker 1: and Ransom again says, no, it kind of sounds like
Speaker 1: you're saying the opposite. They go back and forth, but
Speaker 1: ultimately what we get here is a sort of a
Speaker 1: tash Land situation. And I don't think this is a
Speaker 1: big spoiler, but in the Last Battle of Narnia, there's
Speaker 1: an attempt to merge as Land with this false deity
Speaker 1: Tash into tash Land as a way of saying, you know,
Speaker 1: they're really just two ways of saying the same thing.
Speaker 1: And so we see this theme is going to get
Speaker 1: repeated in Lewis's literature. And then Western goes on and
Speaker 1: talk about how this God, this world spirit is discovering itself,
Speaker 1: it's creating itself over time and Ransom. Here he notes
Speaker 1: the difference between what Western is saying and what he
Speaker 1: believes as a Christian that for Weston, we are pursuing
Speaker 1: change for Ransom, For Christianity, we're actually pursuing that which
Speaker 1: has always been. We're not pursuing something that's temporal. We're
Speaker 1: pursuing the eternal. We're pursuing the stable, We're pursuing the unmoving.
Speaker 1: And so what Western is proposing here is the exact
Speaker 1: opposite of what Ransom embraces. And again more of this
Speaker 1: conflation here between God and Satan, between real progress and regress.
Speaker 1: Let's keep moving. And then in the midst of the
Speaker 1: speech just kind of, all of a sudden, we get
Speaker 1: this horrifying passage where it says, then horrible things began
Speaker 1: to happen. A spasm like that preceding a deadly vomit
Speaker 1: twisted Weston's face out of recognition. As it passed for
Speaker 1: one second, something like the old Weston reappeared, the old Western,
Speaker 1: staring with eyes of horror and howling Ransom, Ransom, for
Speaker 1: Christ's sake, don't let them. And instantly his whole body
Speaker 1: spun around as if he had been hit by a
Speaker 1: revolver bullet, and he fell to the ground and was
Speaker 1: there rolling at Ransoman's feet, slavering and chattering and tearing
Speaker 1: up the moss by handfuls. I think that really the
Speaker 1: most horrifying scenes in this entire book are those times
Speaker 1: when Weston, the real Weston, seems to be there, somewhere present,
Speaker 1: and Ransom isn't even sure when this happens, if if
Speaker 1: this is genuine, if Weston is somehow still there, or
Speaker 1: if or if it's some kind of trick in order
Speaker 1: to get sympathy for the devil. It's not really clear,
Speaker 1: but just the idea that okay, if Western, the real Western,
Speaker 1: a real human as violence. He may be that a
Speaker 1: real human is there somewhere. Well, that is the horror,
Speaker 1: and that is what causes us, or at least causes me,
Speaker 1: and causes Ransom to feel some genuine sympathy for Weston.
Speaker 1: That it doesn't matter that he's a villain. He's still
Speaker 1: a human, right, He's still made in God's image, he
Speaker 1: still is someone who's supposed to be in a different
Speaker 1: state of being. And Lewis talks about this somewhere I
Speaker 1: can't remember where offhand, I feel like it might have
Speaker 1: been for love because reading that recently, maybe somewhere else,
Speaker 1: but regardless, he talks about how we should experience a
Speaker 1: genuine hatred for what is evil, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: when somebody does what is evil, we should also feel
Speaker 1: sorry for them, you know, even if, yes, of course
Speaker 1: they're responsible for the evil that they did, well, we
Speaker 1: should feel sorry, We should feel regret that they did
Speaker 1: such a thing for their own sake. That we should
Speaker 1: have a genuine compassion for those who are or those
Speaker 1: who have given themselves over to evil, because we're still
Speaker 1: dealing with a human being and that should give us
Speaker 1: a kind of love and some kind of compassion a
Speaker 1: kind of sympathy even when we're told that God does
Speaker 1: not delight in the death of the wicked, but desires
Speaker 1: that all come to repentance. And I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: get into right now the broader theology of predestination and
Speaker 1: all that. I think that's a conversation worth having. Its
Speaker 1: not in this context, but nonetheless that verse is given
Speaker 1: to us for a reason that we should have a
Speaker 1: kind of compassion even for vile sinners, recognizing that but
Speaker 1: for the grace of God, there go I. And so
Speaker 1: these are what I find, I mean, the most disturbing
Speaker 1: passages where it seems like a real Weston is there
Speaker 1: somewhere amidst the young man. Now, this philosophy of the
Speaker 1: cult of progress that we just saw Weston laid out
Speaker 1: in his monologue really becomes the driving temptation that he
Speaker 1: tries to give to the lady of Perilandra Wesson encourages
Speaker 1: her to think about what it would be like to
Speaker 1: live on this island that she's forbidden from living on.
Speaker 1: You know, what would it be like to break this
Speaker 1: commandment that God has given you? And she says that
Speaker 1: would be a strange thing to think about. What will
Speaker 1: never happen. Weston replies, Nay, in our world we do
Speaker 1: it all the time. We put words together to mean
Speaker 1: things that have never happened, in places that never were
Speaker 1: beautiful words well put together, and then tell them to
Speaker 1: one another. We call his stories or poetry. In that
Speaker 1: old world you spoke of Malachandra, they did the same.
Speaker 1: It is for mirth and wonder and wisdom. What is
Speaker 1: the wisdom in it? Because the world is made up
Speaker 1: not only of what is, but what might be. And
Speaker 1: at this point I think it'd be worth talking about
Speaker 1: Tolkien's idea of subcreation, which we see chiefly in his
Speaker 1: essay on Fairy Stories, which I referenced earlier. And so
Speaker 1: Tolkien talks about how, okay, God is the ultimate creator,
Speaker 1: but we also made in his image, are called to
Speaker 1: be subcreators, meaning we work with the things that he
Speaker 1: has made in order to put things together in new
Speaker 1: ways that don't break from the harmony, don't break from
Speaker 1: the order that God has sent, but actually point back
Speaker 1: to that order as we put things together with reason
Speaker 1: and with beauty and with wisdom. That's actually not what
Speaker 1: Weston or the unman here is proposing. Well, he's proposing
Speaker 1: is not really subcreation, but creation. He is encouraging her
Speaker 1: to step out into the void, step out into what
Speaker 1: is not, in order to determine what should be. And
Speaker 1: so he's trying to tempt her into not subcreation, he's
Speaker 1: trying to tempt her into primary creation, into usurping the
Speaker 1: unique role of God, which again brings me back to
Speaker 1: the Silmarillion. We're told that Melkor had gone often alone
Speaker 1: into the void places, seeking the imperishable flame, for desire
Speaker 1: grew hot within him to bring into being things of
Speaker 1: his own. And it seemed to him that Aluvatar took
Speaker 1: no thought for the void, and he was impatient of
Speaker 1: his emptiness. Yet he found not the fire, for it
Speaker 1: is with a Louvatar, but being alone, he had been
Speaker 1: on to conceive thoughts of his own, unlike those of
Speaker 1: his brethren. So as with Satan Melcor, the Satan figure
Speaker 1: of the Civillion, he goes off and tries to create
Speaker 1: things ex nihilo himself. He tries to take charge over being,
Speaker 1: which I think is something like the imperishable flame. It
Speaker 1: speaks to the independence of God and the fact that
Speaker 1: God alone is able to give being to contingent realities
Speaker 1: and This is his unique responsibility that Melchor tried to usurp.
Speaker 1: This is exactly what the Unman is now tempting the
Speaker 1: lady of Perolandra with. He is tempting her to be
Speaker 1: a primary creator rather than a subcreator, to determine the
Speaker 1: waves rather than receiving and riding the waves. Okay, and
Speaker 1: then we get more of this kind of temptation. You
Speaker 1: can read these passages for your own on the PowerPoint,
Speaker 1: but I'll just keep moving, same basic theme being unraveled here, okay.
Speaker 1: And then as this theme does continue to develop, Weston
Speaker 1: or the Unman starts to cause her to separate out
Speaker 1: from herself. Remember when I talked about, in reference to
Speaker 1: meditation and tool shed, how Ransom himself inadvertently started this
Speaker 1: process of getting her to stop experiencing reality and to
Speaker 1: reflect on it abstractly, to reflect on it so called
Speaker 1: objectively scientifically. So now Weston is going to try to
Speaker 1: move this further, and he's going to convince her that
Speaker 1: Mileldal really wants her to walk on her own, and
Speaker 1: that as long as she is looking along the beams,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and attaching herself to him in this
Speaker 1: direct relationship, well then she's engaging some kind disobedience because
Speaker 1: he wants her to be independent, and so he's working
Speaker 1: on subverting her religion. He's working on subverting her experience,
Speaker 1: causing her to step out in judgment rather than to
Speaker 1: welcome the embrace of that which is chiefly good. And
Speaker 1: to this end he gives her a mirror, which she
Speaker 1: finds disturbing. Fortunately, this tactic doesn't really work out, at
Speaker 1: least directly, but he's trying to convince her to see
Speaker 1: herself rather than to see herself in Maleldel, to see
Speaker 1: herself in God. He wants her to fall in love
Speaker 1: with her own beauty, separately from the beauty that she
Speaker 1: has and that which is chiefly beautiful. And to the
Speaker 1: extent that she would do this, to the extent that
Speaker 1: she would see her own beauty in herself, she would
Speaker 1: actually end up losing sight of that which actually is beautiful.
Speaker 1: She would lose the experience of beauty by looking at beauty.
Speaker 1: Remember in the last video when I quoted from the
Speaker 1: Weight of Glory, which Lewis says that what we want
Speaker 1: to do is to be embraced in beauty. We want
Speaker 1: to consume beauty. And how beauty consume us. But no,
Speaker 1: now she's separating this out. She is looking in on
Speaker 1: herself as beautiful, rather than seeing the beauty of giving
Speaker 1: herself over in love to that which is chiefly lovely.
Speaker 1: I think of this quote from Lewis's Letters to Malcolm,
Speaker 1: when he says, any patch of sunlight in a wood
Speaker 1: will show you something about the sun you can never
Speaker 1: get from reading books on astronomy, And so too, simply
Speaker 1: experiencing beauty is going to show you something about beauty
Speaker 1: that you would never get from any book on aesthetics.
Speaker 1: Though never you never get from simply looking at beautiful
Speaker 1: things and thinking, oh, that's beautiful. What we need to
Speaker 1: do is actually embrace beauty by giving ourselves over to
Speaker 1: that which is chiefly beautiful. And I'm using this repetitive
Speaker 1: framing up my language for a purpose, because all that
Speaker 1: is good, all that is true, all that is beautiful,
Speaker 1: should be pointing us toward that which is chiefly good
Speaker 1: and true and beautiful. Because if we're not doing that,
Speaker 1: if we're not following the particulars up to the universals,
Speaker 1: if we're not following the good that makes good things good,
Speaker 1: that what we're doing is actually giving ourselves over to
Speaker 1: the shadows, and so doing, we're becoming shadows ourselves, think
Speaker 1: to the great divorce, if you've already read that agay.
Speaker 1: And then in another temptation, the un man is telling
Speaker 1: the lady all of these stories, all these stories about
Speaker 1: these brave women who have given themselves over. They've suffered losses,
Speaker 1: they've sacrificed, not ultimately for the good, but they've sacrificed
Speaker 1: for their own heroism. And and all these stories sound
Speaker 1: very good, right, They sound like a way of praising
Speaker 1: the goodness, the strength, the power, the responsibility, the authority
Speaker 1: of women, the heroism of women. And then toward the
Speaker 1: end of the scene we're told at the bottom here
Speaker 1: the precise details were often not very easy to follow.
Speaker 1: Raisom had more than a suspicion that many of these
Speaker 1: noble pioneers had been what an ordinary terrestrial speech we
Speaker 1: call witches or perverts. And so he's using all these
Speaker 1: villainouses but framing them in such a way that it
Speaker 1: seems like they have some heroism to them, some power,
Speaker 1: some authority. And so this is a perverted kind of love,
Speaker 1: because real love does sacrifice itself. Real love is heroic,
Speaker 1: Real love does give itself away, but doesn't give itself
Speaker 1: away simply for the sake of heroism. It doesn't give
Speaker 1: itself away simply for the sake of tragedy. No, it
Speaker 1: gives itself away for that which is chiefly lovable. Christina
Speaker 1: Hale says this really well. She says, instead, he introduces
Speaker 1: vanity into her love, the belief that there is some
Speaker 1: great thing that she must overcome in order to achieve
Speaker 1: true nobility. The unman attempts to make the idea of
Speaker 1: sacrifice more attractive by introducing a self focus. This warped
Speaker 1: focus is what enables the suggestion that Maleeldel actually desires
Speaker 1: Tinnadril's disobedience to become believable, and so he's raising up
Speaker 1: the idea of sacrifice as such with this self focus
Speaker 1: in a way that's going to cause her to see
Speaker 1: as liberation that which is actually imprisoning. She's going to
Speaker 1: confuse nobility with what's actually going to make her ignoble.
Speaker 1: She's going to confuse heroism and villainy. However, we're going
Speaker 1: to see coming out of this an example of true sacrifice,
Speaker 1: the right kind of sacrifice. And that's why I'm calling
Speaker 1: this section the ransom Ransom, here's a voice that says
Speaker 1: to him, it is not for nothing that you are
Speaker 1: named Ransom. My name also is Ransom. And so here
Speaker 1: we clearly have Maleeldal, We clearly have Christ himself communicating
Speaker 1: to Ransom. Ransom is going to follow in the ransom
Speaker 1: in Christ's footsteps. He is going to engage in a fight.
Speaker 1: He's going to engage in a sacrifice. He is going
Speaker 1: to be harshest nails, so to speak. And through being
Speaker 1: as harsh as nails, by also being the ideal martyr,
Speaker 1: he is going to use the martial influence in the
Speaker 1: appropriate way, laying himself down for the lady, giving himself
Speaker 1: over for her love, and in so doing she is
Speaker 1: going to be exalted. And this is the proper relationship
Speaker 1: between the masculine and the feminine. The masculine uses its
Speaker 1: strength in service of the lady, who is then exalted,
Speaker 1: and in her exaltation, he also is exalted along with
Speaker 1: her as he joins with her, and so her glory
Speaker 1: becomes his glory as well. Or perhaps another way of
Speaker 1: framing all this is the masculine gives his glory to
Speaker 1: the feminine, and then she in turn gives her glory
Speaker 1: to the masculine. And so it is this interchange, It
Speaker 1: is this cosmic dance, which is language that we'll see
Speaker 1: toward the end. But already what we see here is
Speaker 1: these particular examples of the masculiness feminine engaging with each
Speaker 1: other on a particular level that's going to move up
Speaker 1: to the universal. And so at this point we're told
Speaker 1: that Ransom begins to have an absolute hatred for evil.
Speaker 1: But this is an appropriate kind of hatred. It is
Speaker 1: hatred for evil, and we should have hatred for evil.
Speaker 1: The joy came from finding at last what hatred was
Speaker 1: made for, as a boy with an axe rejoices on
Speaker 1: finding a tree, or a boy with a box of
Speaker 1: colored chalks rejoices on finding a pile of perfectly white paper.
Speaker 1: So he rejoiced in the perfect congruity between his emotion
Speaker 1: and its object. And so if this is appropriate kind
Speaker 1: of hatred, if you don't hate what is evil, then
Speaker 1: you can't possibly love what is good, Because if you
Speaker 1: love what is good, then you desire the good of
Speaker 1: good things. You desire that good things be conserved and
Speaker 1: upheld and glorified and put in their proper place and
Speaker 1: if you love what is good, then you need to
Speaker 1: hate that which would do harm to what is good.
Speaker 1: You need to hate evil, you need to hate sin.
Speaker 1: You show compassion to a wolf and you're going to
Speaker 1: lose your flock. And so if you love your sheep,
Speaker 1: you need to be willing to exercise hatred toward the wolf.
Speaker 1: And that's what we see here. This is when Ransom
Speaker 1: realizes that this conflict is not going to be a
Speaker 1: conflict of words. He needs to fight hand to hand,
Speaker 1: and so we get this brutal hand to hand combat
Speaker 1: between Ransom and the young man where they both get
Speaker 1: terribly wounded. They end up in the water, and eventually
Speaker 1: they are washed into this underground cavern. And so this
Speaker 1: contest is now going to take place underneath Perilandra, or
Speaker 1: within Perilandra. Remember the imagery at the very beginning of
Speaker 1: the coffin. He is now being laid to rest under
Speaker 1: the earth of Perilandra. This is where the real combat
Speaker 1: is going to take place. And remember the specific language
Speaker 1: we got from the Weight of Glory in the last video. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the cross comes before the Crown and tomorrow is a
Speaker 1: Monday morning. A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls
Speaker 1: of the world, and we are invited to follow our
Speaker 1: great captain inside. And so this is going to be
Speaker 1: the ultimate sequence of death and rebirth of a contest
Speaker 1: in the grave that's going to give way to the
Speaker 1: glorification of the world. As quite literally, Ransom goes into
Speaker 1: a cleft that has opened in the pitiless walls of
Speaker 1: the world, and now he is going to follow his
Speaker 1: great captain inside. He is going to play a Christological
Speaker 1: role here underneath the ground of Perilandra And then with
Speaker 1: his trinitarian formulation, we get the defeat of the unman
Speaker 1: in the name of the Father and the Son and
Speaker 1: the Holy Ghost. Here goes I mean, amen, said Ransom,
Speaker 1: And he hurled the stone as hard as he could
Speaker 1: the unman's face. The unmanned fell as a pencil falls,
Speaker 1: the face smashed out of all recognition. And so with
Speaker 1: a stone to the face, the unman falls, and that
Speaker 1: is the end of this conflict. However, Ransom was very wounded,
Speaker 1: but most of his wounds heel. But one wound does
Speaker 1: not heal, and that, of course is the wound on
Speaker 1: his heel, we're told. But just as a man who
Speaker 1: has had a fall only discovers the real hurt when
Speaker 1: the minor bruises and cuts are less painful. Was nearly
Speaker 1: well before he detected his most serious injury. It was
Speaker 1: a wound in his heel. The shape made it quite
Speaker 1: clear that the wound had been inflicted by human teeth,
Speaker 1: the nasty, blunt teeth of our own species, which crushed
Speaker 1: and grind more than they cut. And so Ransom crushed
Speaker 1: the head of the unman, just as the unman wounded
Speaker 1: the heel of Ransom. This is obviously connected to Genesis
Speaker 1: three fifteen. And I'll put enmity between you and the woman,
Speaker 1: and between your offspring and hers. He will strike your head,
Speaker 1: and you will strike his heel. And so Ransom creates
Speaker 1: this separation. He prevents the union between the woman and
Speaker 1: the devil, and in so doing he crushes the head
Speaker 1: of his enemy, and he has his heel wounded. And
Speaker 1: so obvious Genesis three fifteen playing out here in the story,
Speaker 1: again highlighting Ransom's cchrystological role. Here, it's not that Ransom
Speaker 1: allegorically is Christ, because Christ is actually in this story right.
Speaker 1: Christ is Maleldel. Ransom, as we saw at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the story, is supposed to be seen as just
Speaker 1: another Christian who, now by virtue of being a human
Speaker 1: in the image of the incarnation, in light of the
Speaker 1: commissioning that comes with the Gospel, Ransom is now called
Speaker 1: to do the kinds of things that Christ did, namely
Speaker 1: to fight the devil and to undo his works. And
Speaker 1: so Ransom here is not just giving us another telling
Speaker 1: of the Gospel narrative. He's giving us a telling of
Speaker 1: what Christians are supposed to do, even though this is
Speaker 1: being told in a mythological format. And I think that
Speaker 1: the specific Christological imagery we get here is really drives
Speaker 1: in this fact. After this conflict is over, Ransom eventually
Speaker 1: finds his way to the Holy Mountain, where the king
Speaker 1: and Queen of Perolandra receive their glory. And a lot
Speaker 1: of this is really difficult to follow, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think that there's some benefit in trying to rationally
Speaker 1: break down everything that we see, but I think it's
Speaker 1: probably best just experience. You know, if you've never listened
Speaker 1: to the audiobook, then this is actually one area where
Speaker 1: where I would actually encourage you to listen to the audiobook,
Speaker 1: and I think you might actually get more out of
Speaker 1: it than reading. Now. Normally I'm going to encourage reading
Speaker 1: whatever possible, you know, real reading with paper and ink. However,
Speaker 1: there are certain sections of literature that I think our
Speaker 1: best to just listen to you and have read over you,
Speaker 1: kind of let it wash over you. And I would
Speaker 1: definitely put the last portion of Paralandra into that camp.
Speaker 1: Back at the beginning of the story, the Lewis character
Speaker 1: says I was questioning him on the subject of his
Speaker 1: voyage to Venus, which he doesn't often allow, and had
Speaker 1: incautiously said, of course, I realized it's all rather too
Speaker 1: vague for you to put into words, when he took
Speaker 1: me up rather sharply for such a patient man by saying,
Speaker 1: on the contrary, it is words that are vague. The
Speaker 1: reason why the thing can't be expressed is that it's
Speaker 1: too definite for language. And this gets us back to
Speaker 1: the beam that is in the tool shed, that the
Speaker 1: most definite realities are experienced rather than abstractly rationalize. And
Speaker 1: so there's something about just the experience of love of
Speaker 1: that is more real than any kind of definitions or
Speaker 1: any kind of philosophy can give up love. The real
Speaker 1: experience of beauty is more real than any articulated philosophy
Speaker 1: of esthetics. And so what Lewis is trying to get
Speaker 1: us to do here is to embrace reality. Right, you
Speaker 1: want to know what love is, We'll give yourself over
Speaker 1: to that which is worth giving yourself over to, and
Speaker 1: you'll learn something about love, something that you'll never get
Speaker 1: out of a philosophy of love book. You want to
Speaker 1: experience glory, well, behold glorious things, and you'll come to
Speaker 1: experience glory in a way that a definition or a
Speaker 1: philosophy of glory can never actually give you. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what we see here in this final sequence.
Speaker 1: What we see here is an experience of truth, goodness,
Speaker 1: and beauty. So with that in mind, I'm just going
Speaker 1: to read a little bit from this last sequence in
Speaker 1: Perilandra with fairly minimal commentary. But I will comment on
Speaker 1: more of this when I get into my broader mythology
Speaker 1: and philosophy video, But for now, I think it's worth
Speaker 1: just looking at rate. Some whole understanding of what the
Speaker 1: center of reality is, what the center of history is,
Speaker 1: is starting to get moved around. He's starting to kind
Speaker 1: of loose track of what is our anchoring point in
Speaker 1: reality and so he says, as soon as we think
Speaker 1: we see one as a center, it melts away into nothing,
Speaker 1: or into some other plan that we never dreamed of,
Speaker 1: And what was the center becomes the rim, till we
Speaker 1: doubt if any shape, or plan or pattern was ever
Speaker 1: more than a trick of our own eyes, cheated with hope,
Speaker 1: or tired with too much looking to what is all driving?
Speaker 1: What is the morning you speak of? What is it
Speaker 1: the beginning of the beginning of the great game of
Speaker 1: the great Dance, said Tor, I know little of it
Speaker 1: as yet, Let the Aldealer speak. And now the Aldeala speak.
Speaker 1: The Great Dance does not wait to be perfect, And
Speaker 1: tell the peoples of the low worlds are gathered into it.
Speaker 1: We speak not of when it will begin. It has
Speaker 1: begun from before always. There was no time when we
Speaker 1: did not rejoice before his face, as now the dance
Speaker 1: would we dance is at the center, and for the
Speaker 1: dance all things were made. Blessed be he. There seems
Speaker 1: no plan because it is all planned. There seems no
Speaker 1: center because it is all center. Blessed be he. Now
Speaker 1: remember how Weston talked about how reality is unfolding over time,
Speaker 1: It is creating itself over time. And so this is
Speaker 1: what makes progress a chief good, because it is in
Speaker 1: harmony with the reality that is continually progressing, continually dancing,
Speaker 1: continually evolving. This is an opposing philosophy to what the
Speaker 1: ideala give us when they say that the great Dance
Speaker 1: is not waiting for people to discover it. It's not
Speaker 1: waiting for people to create it. It's not waiting for history.
Speaker 1: The great Dance has always been taking place from eternity.
Speaker 1: Our role is to participate in that dance which has
Speaker 1: always been taking place before always, And so it's a
Speaker 1: movement toward being, toward stability, toward actualization. And as we
Speaker 1: are moving in the appropriate direction, then all of our
Speaker 1: finite particular steps gain significance as they're wrapped up into
Speaker 1: the appropriate context, and we recognize the true center, which
Speaker 1: of course is God himself, he in whom we live
Speaker 1: and move and have our being. And so there seems
Speaker 1: no plan because it is all plan. There seems no
Speaker 1: center because it is all center. Blessed be He. He
Speaker 1: has no need at all of anything that is made,
Speaker 1: and ell deal is not more needful to him than
Speaker 1: a grain of the dust. A people world, no more
Speaker 1: needful than a world that is empty, but all needless alike,
Speaker 1: and what all add to him is nothing. We also
Speaker 1: have no need of anything that is made. Love me,
Speaker 1: my brothers, for I am infinitely superfluous, and your love
Speaker 1: shall be like his born, neither of your need nor
Speaker 1: of my deserving, but a plain bounty. Blessed be he.
Speaker 1: All things are by him and for him. He utters
Speaker 1: himself also for his own delight, and sees that he
Speaker 1: is good. He is his own begotten in what proceeds
Speaker 1: from him is himself. Blessed be he. And so, in
Speaker 1: other words, God doesn't need us. Nothing about us is needed,
Speaker 1: nothing about anything is needed. God creates out of abundance.
Speaker 1: He creates out of an abundance of love, of trinitarian love,
Speaker 1: and in fact, if you go to mere Christianity, in
Speaker 1: referencing God's innertrinitarian relationships, he talks about taking part in
Speaker 1: this dance where each member of the Trinity plays its
Speaker 1: role in this glorified divine love that then moves the
Speaker 1: rest of the created order and summons it to participate
Speaker 1: in this love. And so a lot of that is
Speaker 1: what's playing out here as well. Now, to wrap up
Speaker 1: this video, I'm just going to read a couple more
Speaker 1: passages from the Weight of Glory that think will end
Speaker 1: us on the right note. In light of the themes
Speaker 1: that we've been discussing, we cannot mingle with the splendors
Speaker 1: we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament
Speaker 1: are rustling with the rumor that will not always be so. Someday,
Speaker 1: God willing, we shall get in. When souls have become
Speaker 1: as perfect and voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is
Speaker 1: in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory,
Speaker 1: or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only
Speaker 1: the first sketch. For you must not think that I
Speaker 1: am putting forward any heathen fancy of being absorbed into Nature.
Speaker 1: Nature is mortal. We shall outlive her. When all the
Speaker 1: suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you
Speaker 1: will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol,
Speaker 1: but it is the simpole Scripture invites me to use.
Speaker 1: We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her,
Speaker 1: into that splendor which she fitfully reflects. Apparently, then our
Speaker 1: lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in
Speaker 1: the universe from which we now feel cut off. To
Speaker 1: be on the inside of some door which we have
Speaker 1: always seen from the outside is no mere neurotic fancy,
Speaker 1: but the truest index of our real situation. And to
Speaker 1: be at last summoned inside would be both glory and
Speaker 1: honor beyond all our merit, and also the healing of
Speaker 1: that old ache. Be comforted, small one, in your smallness.
Speaker 1: He lays no merit on you. Receive and be glad, godspeed.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and thank you to all of
Speaker 1: my patrons that make these various things that we're doing possible.
Speaker 1: And by name, I'd like to thank all to your
Speaker 1: three patrons in higher so many things to Mark, Aaron, Amanda, Andrew, Chase, Chas,
Speaker 1: Christopher Clinton, David Don, Aaron Heavy, Adam Jack, Jamie, Justin, Justin, Kyle, Paul, Roger,
Speaker 1: Ross Tyler, and William You all religiou go aboff and
Speaker 1: beyond and funding the work that I'm doing here and
Speaker 1: allowing you to keep doing this and to keep providing
Speaker 1: more and just generally going further up and further in.
Speaker 1: If you like to support my work as well and
Speaker 1: support this entire fellowship that head over to Patreon dot
Speaker 1: com slash Mythic Mind. Even five dollars a month gives
Speaker 1: you discord access and open invitations all of our podcasts,
Speaker 1: all the podcasts delivered early and ad free for youum
Speaker 1: so again, any support does that for you? Make sure
Speaker 1: you become a Tier three annual patron if you want
Speaker 1: to get access to all my courses. If you're even
Speaker 1: interested in two or more, this is going to be
Speaker 1: the best deal for you. Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind.
Speaker 1: But that's it for now. Stay tuned for the latest
Speaker 1: course announcement and make sure that you catch the next
Speaker 1: thing coming out from Mythic Mind, which is going to
Speaker 1: be over on Mythic Mind Games on Friday, and so
Speaker 1: see you then. Until then, godspeed. The Psychology of Soaring
Speaker 1: here Kuyguards, a ten week course led up by doctor
Speaker 1: Andrew Snyder, coming in the spring of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: What if anxiety is not just a disease to be
Speaker 1: cured or to be wished away, but it's actually a
Speaker 1: revelation of one of our most fundamental freedoms, A freedom
Speaker 1: that is a make by possibility. And I don't just
Speaker 1: mean the possibility of doing one thing or another, not
Speaker 1: just the possibility of what might happen to you or
Speaker 1: around you in this world of changing fortunes, but rather
Speaker 1: the possibility that's presented by our own will, of our
Speaker 1: ability to determine what it is that we are and
Speaker 1: where we're going to base our identity. Who are we?
Speaker 1: What is our essence? Where will we seek for stability
Speaker 1: in this changing world? What even are we in a
Speaker 1: world that is constantly given over to change and too uncertainty.
Speaker 1: These are questions that we answer at every single moment,
Speaker 1: although we often fail to recognize that there's even a
Speaker 1: choice to be made, let alone that we are the
Speaker 1: ones who are doing the choosing. Most people today answer
Speaker 1: these questions by claiming that we are whatever we want
Speaker 1: to be. There's no one to tell us no or
Speaker 1: where to go. Truth, goodness, and beauty, and even what
Speaker 1: it means to be human is entirely up for grabs, because,
Speaker 1: as the secular existentialist Jean Paul SARTs said, as existence
Speaker 1: precedes essence, which means that we are thrown into this
Speaker 1: world without purpose or design. We have no boundaries, and
Speaker 1: we are all just making it up as we go along.
Speaker 1: Popular academia and even well meaning theological critics often trace
Speaker 1: this thought back to Soaring Cairrikeguard, the nineteenth century Danish
Speaker 1: philosopher and so called father of existentialism. However, as I
Speaker 1: argued in my doctoral dissertation, an honest reading of Careguard
Speaker 1: will actually lead to very different conclusions. In this ten
Speaker 1: week study, we will discuss three of Cakedguard's critical and
Speaker 1: often very difficult psychological texts that form the foundation for
Speaker 1: my dissertation. The concept of anxiety, The Sickness unto Death,
Speaker 1: and Fear and Trembling. The concept of anxiety provides a
Speaker 1: penetrating investigation into the experience and consequences of anxiety as
Speaker 1: the gateway to losing or finding oneself. The Sickness unto
Speaker 1: Death surveys the various forms that the loss of one's
Speaker 1: self can take, such as reality denying, hyper imaginations which
Speaker 1: run in the mainstream of today's thought, an inability to
Speaker 1: consider the possibility of change or identification with transient things,
Speaker 1: and several other forms of despair, many of which often
Speaker 1: go undetected, at least for a time now for a
Speaker 1: more positive outcome. Fear and Trembling focuses on Abraham's sacrifice
Speaker 1: of Isaac to demonstrate the leap of faith that results
Speaker 1: in one's true self. Ask your Guard rights in one
Speaker 1: of his journals. With God's help, I shall become myself.
Speaker 1: Whether you are interested in the history of ideas and
Speaker 1: you want to better understand Careguard's role as a Christian
Speaker 1: who became dubbed as the father of existentialism, or you
Speaker 1: have more existential concerns, such as finding a better way
Speaker 1: to understand your anxiety as a potential pathway to living
Speaker 1: out your human purpose. Or you want to root out
Speaker 1: underlying despair that seems to ruminate on the surface even
Speaker 1: in the good times when you stop to pay attention,
Speaker 1: or you want to discover what it means to live
Speaker 1: as a knight of faith, then join me in studying
Speaker 1: the psychology of Soaring Kirky Garden. You can enroll in
Speaker 1: the individual course from the shop at patreon dot com
Speaker 1: slash Mythic Mind, or become a Tier three annual patron.
Speaker 1: You get access to all courses that begin within that
Speaker 1: yearly term. A definitive date will be provided as the
Speaker 1: course gets closer, but you can look forward to this
Speaker 1: study in the spring of twenty twenty six to get
Speaker 1: the best value be sure to head over to patreon
Speaker 1: dot com slash Mythic Mind right now and become a
Speaker 1: Tier three annual patroon. I hope to see you there