Great Books #13: Gay Talese's Sparks of Light

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:01]This man, his name is Gay Tis.

[00:00:06]This year he's 94 years old. He's still going strong. This is his wife, Nan Tis.

[00:00:12]For decades, they were the first couple of American literature in New York City.

[00:00:19]And I'm very proud to have him as my mentor.

[00:00:24]So about 30 years ago, um I was in Beijing.

[00:00:31]I had just graduated from Yale College.

[00:00:34]I was working as a high school teacher, but I wanted to become a writer. I was English literature major at Yale. And so um I met some journalist friends who introduced me to Gay Tiss.

[00:00:46]In the summer of 99, he came to Beijing to work on a story and he needed a translator. So I became his translator for 6 months. And during those 6 months, I received the best education any young writer could receive from the greatest American writer of his generation.

[00:01:11]He practices an art called literary journalism and no one else practices this the way he does.

[00:01:25]So what he does is that he will spend hours and hours just talking with someone, trying to get to know this person, trying to understand the world from this person's perspective.

[00:01:43]And then after spending days, months with that person and talking to other people around him or her, he will try to draw out a memory from that person and put it in words uh in a way that resonates with uh his audience. And he is a genius.

[00:02:09]And when I mean he's a genius, I mean he is unique in what he does. Every writer we've read this semester, whether it's Homer or Dante, uh even Gay Leise will read him today. They are unique in what they do.

[00:02:28]Harold Bloom, the great American lit critic says that great literature is shocking.

[00:02:37]You read it and you are shaken by it in a way that you remember forever. It is a deep emotional experience that stays with you for the entire life and it shakes you in a way that forces you to reorientate your world view. It forces you to better understand who you are, your place in the world, and your understanding of the world. And that's what Gayles does. What he does is unique. No one else does what he does.

[00:03:08]No one else can do what he does. And it is shocking. It's shocking because it transcends time and space.

[00:03:21]Okay.

[00:03:22]his writing are able to transcend the uh time he's writing uh in and then spread across different cultures. So we will not fully appreciate his genius maybe until 50 years from now, 100 years from now. Okay. So he is mainly known for his journalism. He is the greatest journalist of his generation. probably the greatest journalist of all time. Uh, American journalism is dying. So, uh, people like him will no longer be able to work. Uh, the these are his boxes.

[00:04:04]What's amazing about his boxes is that they are living souls. Okay? You can't really see it because the picture quality isn't great. But what he does is that he turns each box into a unique soul of its own time, its own place, its own memories. And he uses these box boxes in order to create articles and essays and books.

[00:04:30]Okay? So he takes um memories of life, real memories of life and turns them into great works of literature. He is mainly known for um his book the kingdom of power which is about the New York Times. If you work in New York Times you still read that book today as a young journalist. Uh he wrote a book called Honor Life Father which is about the American mafia and he wrote an essay a magazine article called Frank Sinatra has a cold which is considered the greatest American magazine essay ever written.

[00:05:13]Today I want to talk about a work that people don't really discuss about Gateles. It's called Thy Neighbor's Wife. Oh yeah. Thy neighbor's wife.

[00:05:25]And this is a book that is one of the bestselling American books of all time.

[00:05:32]It sold millions of copies. It made him filthy rich. Um it made millions of dollars.

[00:05:42]At the same time, it basically destroyed his career because um in the late 70s when this book was published, he was a really respected journalist, writer. He was a celebrity and he was married to a beautiful book editor editor named Nantles who will go on to have a spectacular uh publishing career and when you're famous as an American in the 70s there are certain ways you have to behave okay you have to respect rules and conventions you have to respect taboss and at the height of his fame and this is like his you know like mid4s he decides to do something that completely went a against the convention, the rules, morality of that time. He decided to write a book on sex.

[00:06:37]And there have been lots of books pub published about sex before, but the way he decided to go write about this book was itself unconventional. He decided to write about sex. He needed to go into the heart of darkness itself. He needed to explore the deepest, darkest, most depraved secrets of humans. Okay. Um, and so he would spend at least 10 years engaged in all sorts of like really strange activities rich famous men should not do in public. Okay. Yes, I understand. Rich famous men are hypocrites and they do this in private but they don't do it in public and let the whole whole whole world know about it and don't certainly write a book about it. Okay. But the guy decides to become a manager at a massage parlor. He will go to California and engage in orgies. He will masturbate with uh other men. But he is an anthropologist.

[00:07:46]He is trying to understand the complexity of humans. And to do that you first need to appreciate sex. Okay. So this is a book that no one talks about because it is so controversial. It is so disturbing. It's disturbing because it's truthful.

[00:08:10]All right?

[00:08:13]because it tells us that human beings are ultimately animals.

[00:08:18]Um, and so I think this is one of the most courageous books ever written because it puts a mirror to us and shows us that we're just basically monkeys.

[00:08:30]But at the same time, it's also one of the most enlightening, inspiring books that we've written because that has ever been written because if you look at the act of sex of human beings, it's different from animals because ultimately what lies behind sex is religion, our need, our search for God.

[00:08:54]Ultimately, that's why we have sex. If you actually read this anthropological study of sex, then you understand that we humans are first and fundamentally religious beings that seek to return to God. This something that Homer and Donnie has talked about before in the past, right?

[00:09:16]Okay. So before we go into thy labor's wife and explore how it's fundamentally a book about religion, I'm going to go into some um occult mysticism. Okay. So this is something called Cabala.

[00:09:35]The Cabala means to receive.

[00:09:41]And tabala is an understanding of how the universe works, why we're here, where we came from, where we're going. Okay, this is called the tree of life. And the story is this. In the beginning, God is everything. It's pure energy.

[00:10:03]And God wants to know itself. God wants to complete itself. God wants to extend itself. And so what it does is it creates a new being called Adam Cadmmon.

[00:10:18]Okay? Think of Adam Cadm as the cosmic man, the first cosmic man.

[00:10:28]And God is the will to bestow. God is love, generosity, forgiveness. So God wants to extend himself onto Adam Kenmmont. And to do that he creates Adam Kenmon as the will to receive. Okay, the will to receive.

[00:10:49]God is the will to bestow. Adam Kmon is the will to receive.

[00:10:54]But the problem with this is that as the will to receive, Adam Kentman is pure ego.

[00:11:04]And so he doesn't really appreciate why God is so generous with him, why God is willing willing to bestow his essence onto him. So Adam Kedmmon rejects God because he's full of doubt.

[00:11:22]He's skeptical. He's scared. He's embarrassed. Okay? And this ultimately leads to something called the breaking the shattering of the vessels.

[00:11:36]shining vessels. All right. So what happens is that this is the tree of life which is basically Adam Kadmmon. All right. And as God is trying to pour his essence into Adam and Kadmon, Adam Kadmon turns away. And so what happens is the light spills outside the tree of life. Okay? And these sparks of divinity, sparks of divinity scattered across the world and this breaks the world.

[00:12:08]So as a result, this leads to sin, death in our world. So in order for us to repair the world, what we need to do is collect those sparks that have spilled over from the tree of life and then let and then combine them together, repair the vessel so that God may come to our world and reunify with us. Okay.

[00:12:42]So according to Jewish mysticism that is the purpose of life. All right.

[00:12:50]So this is the very basic understanding of the cabala which helps us understand our place in the world and why we're here to do what what we do. Now there are three things I need you guys to remember about the tree of life. Okay.

[00:13:05]The first thing to remember about the tree of life is that it's sexual in nature.

[00:13:15]Okay.

[00:13:17]So the idea is that two forces are combining to create a new force. Right?

[00:13:25]So God is the will to bestow and Adam Kmon is the will to receive.

[00:13:40]So there's a divine fundamental force to sex. Okay? You've been taught that it's a dirty thing, but in fact it's a very fundamental force of the universe. Okay?

[00:13:55]And because the world is sexual, it moves in certain logic. Okay? And the logic is this. You start off with a being who creates another being in order to complete itself. Okay? And this leads to a new being which then creates another being which creates another being. Okay?

[00:14:18]And this is the tree of life.

[00:14:23]In other words, the tree of life is the fundamental movement of the universe. And we can also frame it as thesis, synthesis. Oh, sorry, thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.

[00:14:41]Okay, that's number two. Okay, this is a fundamental logic of the universe.

[00:14:49]And the third thing that we need to appreciate is that our mission on earth, our journey, our purpose is to repair the world by saving the sparks of light. Okay, the sparks of light are fragments of God, memories of God that are now scattered across the world. The problem is that as they become scatter in the world they become enveloped by husk okay material things husk and we call these like the body right so in other words our spirit in sort of inside us it's the vine but we're covered by our body which is the husk and as as a result we're blinded by our material desires Okay.

[00:15:53]And so this is a fundamental conflict in the universe. How do we go about repairing the world? Well, we go about repairing the world by repairing ourselves. By discovering the light inside of us. All right. And so this is the question that Gayles is going to undertake.

[00:16:16]What he's going to do is that he's going to risk his entire career. He did. He did actually risk his entire career. And he's going to go into the deepest darkest corners of the human heart to figure out how we can um liberate our divine aspects from the hus that has imprisoned. Okay, that is a fundamental conflict driving the book Thy Neighbor's Wife.

[00:16:48]All right. And if you read the book, three different solutions are being proposed.

[00:16:58]Okay. Three different solutions are being proposed to answer this mystery.

[00:17:06]The first solution is meditation.

[00:17:13]Okay? Meaning that we ourselves have the energy, the power to liberate our spark from our husk through intense concentration. Okay.

[00:17:30]But in a conceptual sense, what is meditation? Meditation is masturbation.

[00:17:38]I know this sounds really weird. Okay, I know this is going to be disturbing for some of us, but it will make sense when we get to the passage. Okay, I'm just building the framework, the theory for when we read Thy Neighbor's wife. Okay, so that's the first solution. Second solution is to embrace sex.

[00:18:04]Okay. So the theory here is that sex is meant to be free, to be casual, to be joyous.

[00:18:14]But society has imposed restrictions on sex. So sex is a mechanism to control your feelings to imprison your soul.

[00:18:26]Okay? Because sex is taboo. So for example, if you were to get married, you're not supposed to sleep with other people who who is not your wife or your husband. If you do so, you will have betrayed your wife, yourself, and society as a whole.

[00:18:49]And then you ask yourself, well, why is that that important?

[00:18:55]Why is sex and love really the same thing? So what if you have sex with another person? Why does that matter?

[00:19:06]Why can't you separate your husk from your soul? Your soul can belong to another person, but your hus can be a joy can be enjoyed with other people.

[00:19:17]Okay? And the way to liberate people from this convention, from this taboo, is to fully embrace sex. Okay? The more sex there is between different people, the more they recognize that what matters is not the sex. What matters is the love. Okay? Through sin, you can break the taboo.

[00:19:40]You can liberate yourself from the taboo. When you liberate yourself from the taboo, you liberate your soul. Okay?

[00:19:46]and then your soul can then reconnect with God. So that's the second solution proposed in thy neighbor's wife. The third solution is to recognize that the world as constructed is perfect. It's not broken.

[00:20:07]It's perfect. It's not malfunctioning.

[00:20:10]It's doing exactly what it should be doing. Why? Because we're here not to find the sparks of light. We're here to create sparks of light.

[00:20:29]And how can we do so? We can do so through love and the imagination.

[00:20:37]Okay? We're not here to return to God.

[00:20:40]We're here to do what God cannot do.

[00:20:43]extend the boundaries of the universe by using our imagination by creating memories that are transcendental that travel beyond time and space and which are able to inspire others to imagine and to dream as well.

[00:20:58]Okay. And this is the idea of Dante.

[00:21:03]So you have three radical visions of what it means to seek liberation. You have three rad radical visions of what it means to free your soul and to be one with God. Okay. All right. But the argument I would make you to make to you today is that thy neighbor's wife is a great book. The reason why millions have read it, the reason why that even though it was written 50 years ago, we we can still read it and resonate with it is because regardless if these paths fail or succeed, they do resonate with us because they remind us of our fundamental need to return to God. Okay?

[00:21:50]They remind us of who we are. And that's why uh thy neighbor's wife is such a is still such a beautiful and divine book.

[00:21:59]All right. Okay. So, what we're going to do is we're going to look at all three different solutions together. Okay. So, the first is meditation through masturbation. All right. So, this is um chapter one. This is a man named Harold Rubin. And Harold Rubin at this stage he is a teenager living in a very abusive household. He's not happy where he he is. He seeks escape. The way he seeks escape is that he falls in love with a woman named Diane Weber.

[00:22:32]The problem though is that Diane Weber is really not a person. D Weber is a model who postes nude on beaches and her Ruben will masturbate to the um u nude pictures of Dian Weber. So we're just going to read a couple of paragraphs from the story of Harold Rubin in that neighbor's wife. And what I want you to focus on is the fact that this act of masturbation is really one of devotion.

[00:23:08]Okay. Religious de devotion.

[00:23:10]You can read this and think that her Rubin is a priest in a temple and he's working very meticulously, very carefully in order to create a sacrifice, a devotion worthy of God. Okay? So, don't think of this as a sexual scene.

[00:23:32]Think of this as a religious scene. He's masturbating. What what he's really doing is he's offering himself to his god. Okay.

[00:23:43]A lean darkeyed woman on page four attracted her old but the photographer had posed her awkwardly on the narrow branch of a tree and he felt her discomfort. Okay, this is a really interesting sentence. What this is saying is this. When Hero Rubin is reading or looking at pornography, it is an act of giving. It's an act of empathy.

[00:24:11]And so what he's seeking is not control or power. What he's seeking is to be with this woman that he's looking at.

[00:24:22]Okay? It's an act of empathy. It's an act of imagination. So if she feels discomfort, he also feels discomfort as well. That is what religious devotion really is about. Giving yourself completely to God in a way that you open your heart and your soul to God. Okay.

[00:24:43]Uh the nude on page six sitting cross-legged on a studio floor next to an uh easel had fine breasts with a bland expression on her face. Okay. So it's like Herold is having a conversation with each of these pe people. His imagination is creating uh a person in front of him in order to have a dialogue. Okay. So it's not it's not the sexual attraction. It's also dialogue in search of mutual understanding.

[00:25:14]Harold still on his back with his knees slightly raised under the blankets continued to turn the pages past various legs and breasts, hips and buttocks and hair. female fingers and arms reaching out. Eyes looking away from him, eyes looking at him as he occasionally paused to lightly stroke his genitals with his left hand, tilting the magazine in his left in his right hand to eliminate the slight glare on the glossy pages.

[00:25:39]So, we skip a bit. And then there were those extremely rare pictures, those of Diane Weber, that could fulfill him constantly. He estimated that his collection contained 50 photographs of her and within a moment he could locate every one of them and 200 magazines that he kept. He would merely have to glance at the cover and would know exactly where she was within how she was standing, what was in the background, what her attitude seemed be doing during that split special split second when the camera had clicked. He could remember to first seeing these pictures could reconstruct where and when he had bought them. He could practically mark a moment in his life from each of her poses. Each being so real that he believed he knew her personally. She was part of him. And through her, he had become more in touch with himself in several ways. Not merely through acts which Victorian moralists had defined as self-abuse, but rather through self-acceptance, his understanding that naturalness of his desires and of asserting his right to an idealized woman. Okay. So, think back to the cabala. What is God? God is trying to restore himself onto us. We receive him completely. This creates a union which allows us to understand oursel and understand the universe. Okay. So this is exact describing the cabala where because her rubin has been meditating on dying Weber for years. So much so that she's become part of him. This has allowed him to better understand himself as well as his sexuality.

[00:27:12]Okay. Not able to resist any longer, Harold turned the page of Don Weber on the dune, he looked at her lying on her stomach, her head held up into the wind, her eyes closed, the nipple on her left breast erect, her legs spread wide. The late afternoon sun cast an exaggerated shadow of her curveous body along the smooth white sand. Beyond her body was nothing but a sprawling empty desert.

[00:27:36]She seemed so alone, so approachable and available. Hero had merely desire her and she was his. Okay, so this is a climax.

[00:27:45]So this is what sex is for humans. Sex for humans is not about pleasure. It's fundamentally about discovering who you are and creating a reunion between yourself and other person so that you dissolve each other and become one and the whole. Okay. So again I understand this is a scene about masturbation but what makes this genius what makes this beautiful and divine is it's really a description of religious devotion. Okay.

[00:28:19]So the greatness of this writing is to show us that sex at its height, sex at its fundamental level is really about religious worship, right? Um but as you read this book, what you recognize is that hero Ruben ultimately he lives a fantasy because even though it sounds great that through meditation you can become one with God, it doesn't really work. And so what happens is that hero Rubin will actually never meet Diane Weber because um he will just wander through life. And one major reason why he will never meet Don Weber is because he's too afraid to meet Don Weber. Okay, Don Weber is not a real person. It's just a fantasy. He does not want to meet the real Don Weber because meeting her would shatter his fantasy and thus shatter his religion.

[00:29:15]Okay. So this is one solution. It doesn't really work. Meditation doesn't really work. Another solution is uh proposed by John Williamson. Uh sorry uh John Williamson. Okay. And this is his wife Barbara Williamson. And what they're going to do is they're going to create a sex code together.

[00:29:41]And his understanding is this.

[00:29:47]Modern society has made everyone miserable. Why has it made everyone miserable? Because we're always lying to ourselves. Because we're always repressed. We know we don't like the jobs we do. We know that we didn't learn anything in school. We know that the person we married to, we don't actually like. Okay? And so we are in we have imprisoned our soul in the husk. It is society that enforces the husk onto us.

[00:30:16]So the path to liberation means to break out of this husk. And how do you break out of this husk? By engaging in sex.

[00:30:29]To remove the power of sex over you.

[00:30:33]Right? Because in our society sex is about shame. All right. So what he's going to do is he's going to create a cult in which married couples come together have sex with other people and this will liberate them from from the limitations of marriage.

[00:30:54]And so when you get rid of the social convention, what is left is your love for either yourself or for your partner.

[00:31:01]And there's no love then that's good because you will know that you've been living a lie all this time. Okay. So what he's going to do what is is first create his group. And so he's going to recruit individuals in order to join his cult. And the first one one of the first people he he recruits is John Bolero.

[00:31:25]and his wife is named um Judith and they are in a conventional marriage which is to say that they are a they are in an unhappy marriage where they do what they're supposed to do. John Belair goes make good money as an insurance uh salesman. Judith is at home taking care of the kids. So they do what they're supposed to do but is unhappy. And so John Williamson knows he's unhappy and he arranges for John Bolero to have affairs first with his wife Barbara uh and then with other people as well. And then what he's gonna do is that he's gonna invite both John Bolero and Judith to his house where John Bolero is gonna have sex with um another woman in another room and Judith is going to decide is going to be in another room listening in on her husband having sex. Okay? Okay. And this is a very disturbing scene and it's so disturbing we're not going to read it together. Okay. But if you're interested in reading it for yourself then you can pause the um video and read it. Okay.

[00:32:43]But what but ultimately what happens is that John Belair is having sex. Judith screams. But the scream it is considered cathartic. It's therapeutic because the screaming allows you to purge yourself of your fears, of your ego and your fear.

[00:33:01]Okay? You now see like your husband is no longer yours.

[00:33:06]Your you lose your fear because you recognize that your fear that your husband will run away will leave you. Well, he's already done. So, okay. So when you leave your ego in your fear, what happens is the only that remains is who you really are, which is divine spark. Okay? Divine spark. That's a theory anyway. Okay? It doesn't happen this way, but this is a theory. All right? So then what happens is that a few nights later, um, they do it again. John Belo goes to this house and he's having sex with another woman and Judith is in the room um listening in. Okay. But instead of just like listening in screaming, she decides she's going to have sex with John Williamson because now her soul is liberated. She's now free. She doesn't care about um losing her husband. She doesn't care about being mocked by other people. So she she just engages. She indulges her passion and she has sex with John Williamson. Okay. Then John Bolero hears the sex. He comes out and he is startled. He's traumatized to find his wife be having sex with another man. Okay.

[00:34:30]And again, uh you can pause the video and read the scene. It's a very powerful scene.

[00:34:37]and he is shattered. Okay, but this shattering is good because it allows you to repair yourself. Your once your ego and your fear dissipate, you can now resurrect yourself as you truly are.

[00:34:50]Okay, again, this is a theory. I'm not saying this works. Guys, don't try this at home. Okay, but this is a theory and guess what guys, it doesn't work.

[00:35:01]it doesn't work because maybe for the first couple times it works with people but when you actually try this at scale it kind of um screws up. So John Wilson decides to take his religion and spread to as many people as possible. So he sets up a retreat called the sandstone retreat. Sandstone retreat.

[00:35:30]And it's basically just a sex club.

[00:35:32]Okay.

[00:35:35]And when you and so gay lease will go to sex club and spend a lot of time there.

[00:35:40]And he writes this scene about this sex club of like these they're just having orgies all the time. And we know it doesn't work because one day Gay Lee sees John Wils John Wilson looking at a very strong, handsome, muscular black man having sex with his wife Barbara and it freaks him out.

[00:36:04]Okay, so the theory is great. Oh, if we just sit enough, we will absolve ourselves of our guilt, of our fear, and that truly liberate us. But in practice the opposite happens. In practice what happens is that when you engage in sin the guilt compounds itself. So the theory is to remove the husk. Okay the husk so that the soul can be liberated.

[00:36:35]But when you engage in the material world when you have too much sex the husk just extends itself and you become truly blind.

[00:36:45]Okay. And this is why even though John Wilson succeeds in starting a sex cult, even though he becomes very famous with his sandstone retreat, what happens next is that he falls into a deep depression.

[00:37:00]Okay? And he turns away from the sex code and I think he opens a tiger s sanctuary like he goes place with animals. All right? So the second solution doesn't work either. The first solution which is devotion meditation doesn't really work because you depart yourself from the world and from yourself. The second solution which is that you embrace sex, you embrace the husk, you embrace the material world.

[00:37:25]That doesn't work either because it just makes you even more guilty.

[00:37:31]It makes you feel more guilt, more shame. Okay. So, what's the solution?

[00:37:35]Well, at the very end of the book, Thy Neighbor's Wife, Gay Tiss proposes a solution. Okay? And we're going to read it together. But what happens is this. Gay Tiss grew up in Ocean City, New Jersey.

[00:37:52]He is Catholic and Ocean City, New Jersey is mainly Protestant. So, he's an outsider. He's Italian. Uh, everyone else is white. And his family is are immigrants. everyone else is uh has been there for generations. So he's always been an outsider. And as outsider, you feel nothing but guilt, shame, and fear.

[00:38:14]And so after he takes this sexual journey into the into the heart of human darkness into sex, uh he returns to Ocean City and by now he's in his mid mid-4s and he decides to do something really risky. He decides to go to a nude beach.

[00:38:34]This is something that, you know, if you're an immigrant young boy, you could never ever dream of doing, okay? Because you you yourself are already feel you you already fear being ostracized or being laughed at or being mocked at, right? There's no way you're going to a nude beach. But Gay T is now in his mid4s.

[00:38:55]He's still suffering a lot of scars from his immigrant childhood, but he decides, I'm going to go to a beach, the new beach. Okay. So, he goes to New Beach and takes off his clothes and he's there naked.

[00:39:10]Um, and everyone else around him is naked. Then he spots some sailboats selling across and these are people watching them. Okay, so this is society.

[00:39:22]This represents society laughing at you, mocking you, ridiculing you for being different.

[00:39:30]And what happens is that Gator stands up and he stares back at them representing the fact that he's learned the courage to accept who he is. He's learned the power to see social convention, social taboos as prisons. Okay, so this is the very last paragraph of uh the neighbor's wife. Painted on the stern of most of the boats beneath the declaration of their names was the lettering of their local Ocean City, New Jersey. And seated on the decks were people wearing Bermuda shorts and selling caps, bathing suits, straw hats, and dark glasses. And in their hands they held cans of beer, thermos bottles, transitional radios, and handkerchiefs that they waved at the nudas. Okay, this is a lot of detail. The only way you could have have this detail is that if you were actually one of them on these trips. Okay, so this is telling us that before going to the new beach, he himself was on a sailboat sailing like everyone else watching the the nudist and now him he himself has become one one of the nudas. Okay.

[00:40:38]There were also some cat calls coming from the boats, whistles and chairs. And after watching for a few moments, Tise stepped forward on the deck, separating himself from the other quiet nudas. And he faced the boats, recognizing a few of the sailing ships. And he thought some of their passengers. Okay, so these are his friends.

[00:40:56]All right, these are people that he's most afraid of knowing that he's nude.

[00:41:03]He also noticed for the first time that many of the passengers held silvery telescopes and dark binoculars and they sat rigidly on their decks and swayed in the water and squinted in the sun. Okay, so there these are voyers. These are people who secretly spy on pe people being nude. Why are they secretly spying? Because they are afraid.

[00:41:23]They have ego. They have fear. They have guilt. They have shame. So they have to hide themselves. And so to show that he's not afraid, what he does is they were unabashed warriors and looking at him and Tise looked back. Okay. So he's looking at directly at those spying at him and says like I was once you. I was once also afraid and living in fear and now I've liberated myself. Okay. I am now free. The question then is how is it that Gayly succeeded but Harold Rubin and John Wilson they failed. Okay. And it has to do with the nature of poetry and the purpose of writing. Okay. So the Cabala ask us where are the sparks of light.

[00:42:22]Okay.

[00:42:24]All right. So, um, we first have to figure out what consciousness is. And something that I've been teaching in this class for the past semester is that our consciousness is what's real. Our consciousness are infinite dimensions.

[00:42:39]Okay? And we we can know by by like by using this visual depict depiction where our consciousness is spread through infinite dimensions.

[00:42:50]Okay.

[00:42:52]And at a certain dimension, we're all just one force. Okay, the monad.

[00:43:00]So the separation is only superficial.

[00:43:03]In reality, we're all connected in some way. Now, because of this, it tells us that memories are not stored inside our brains, but inside this universal consciousness. All right? So these memories of ours are are stored in the universal consciousness.

[00:43:24]Some of our memories are so powerful or so great that they're shared amongst others. Okay. So even though you yourself have had this memory, it is such a spectacular memory because it's so imaginative, it is so unique, it's so special that it affects other people as well. All right. So these are these memories and these are the sparks of light.

[00:43:53]Okay. So in other words, yes, the purpose of life is to find the sparks of life of light. But what we need to remember is and this is what Homer and Donnie tells us is that we have the capacity to create sparks of light ourselves by living great lives. What are great lives? lives that are unique.

[00:44:14]Lives that are filled with courage, lives that are filled with passion, lives that seek to distinguish themselves from others. Okay? And that's why how Gayles wrote the book Thy Neighbor's wife because he wanted to distinguish himself from others because he was on a search for the truth. Okay?

[00:44:38]He wanted to like search for the sparks.

[00:44:42]Okay. Search for the truth, the sparks of light.

[00:44:47]And in so doing, he himself create these sparks of light.

[00:44:53]Why? Because he spent years interviewing these people, you know, draw out the sparks of light from the universe. And when you do that and you can write it down and share with others, then you expand the imagination of the universe.

[00:45:13]Okay? And this is really the purpose of life. Why are we here? We're here to create sparks of light ourselves so that we can inspire others to search for their own sparks of light. And that is the ultimate message of thy neighbor's wife. Okay.

[00:45:37]All right. Well, that's it for us, guys.

[00:45:40]All right. Um, it's been great teaching you. This is my last class at the school, and this is not the end of my journey.

[00:45:52]I will continue to teach. Uh, two weeks from now, I will be teaching Dante. I'll be live streaming Dante uh to a global audience and after that there'll be more classes and I hope that this is also the beginning of your own journey into life.

[00:46:10]Remember that it's ultimately your choice how to live your life. But to live a truly great life, remember that there are sparks of light out there and it is your um opportunity to create sparks of light in the world. Okay. All right. So, thank you