Çilingir Sofrası 70 / Zerdüşt 2 (with English subtitles)

0:01Çilingir Sofrası 70 / Zarathustra 2 *** Translated by Prof.Dr.Nükhet Kardam ***

0:03So that is why the Persian King told Heraclitus

0:07You are not being understood in the land of Plato and Aristotle due to their influence

0:15In fact, what did Socrates say about Heraclitus?

0:22I forgot the name of the island

0:24Delos,

0:25the divers of Delos could not even find

0:27the bottom of Heraclitus’ philosophy.

0:31Socrates, the person who first opened the way to Enlightenment,

0:36is saying that Heraclitus’ philosophy

0:40is so dark that it is impossible to find its bottom

0:53That it is like a labyrinth,

0:55that’s because dialectical thinking is difficult, not everyone can do it

1:02I want everything good, I don’t want anything bad.

1:06This is an ‘either/or’ kind of thinking.

1:08You see one side or the other. I like hot and I don’t want cold, but the thing is we have both hot and cold.

1:13What do we even mean by hot and cold?

1:16It is just the change in energy according to our own perception

1:23We are the ones who name hot and cold based on our own tolerance levels.

1:31Same thing with our perception of hard and soft,

1:36so we give a name to a perception

1:42based on the limits of our own perception.

1:48But this is not what Heraclitus was talking about

1:50These are our own misperceptions,

1:54What he is saying is that the essential makeup

1:59of the cosmos is ‘fire’ or energy.

2:02The word energy was used by the Greeks and we use it today too

2:11Heraclitus used the word ‘fire’ as a symbol,

2:13not the fire we have when we light a match but as a symbol.

2:16Why? Because fire annihilates itself.

2:21Fire burns wood yes, and the wood disappears

2:29But so does the fire

2:31The fire disappears with the wood it burns,

2:37very interesting.

2:40We don’t need to go into a deeper philosophical discussion now but the question is:

2:43why did the Persian King invite Heraclitus to Persia?

2:49Heraclitus did not accept this invitation

2:52He was the son of a king

2:55He used to play with children in forests and he told the Persian king

3:01I am fine here, playing my own games

3:06He had given up the ambition to be a ruler,

3:09like Buddha,

3:12or Ibrahim Ethem

3:15or Kaygusuz Abdal

3:19When he could have become a ruler, he chose not to

3:22But if I said, I am giving up being a ruler

3:26You might say, you don’t have a kingdom to give up!

3:29First you have to have it in order to give it up.

3:36Why am I talking about all this?

3:38What we are talking about is not difficult to understand,

3:40science today is also telling us the same thing.

3:45Let’s think about an atom.

3:47Protons and electrons are opposites and neutrons bring them to balance

3:53atoms are in fact balls of energy

3:57The opposing forces of the protons and electrons is a dialectic process

4:00if you load too much energy into an atom, it may explode

4:07If you balance those energies,

4:09you can produce electricity or create nuclear power stations.

4:13So there is competition between opposing forces in nature

4:18as well as in our thought processes.

4:25This fundamental dialectical understanding comes to us all the way from Heraclitus

4:36and Zarathustra’s teachings.

4:38The competition between Ahraman and Hürmüz in Ahura Mazda

4:43resulting in a balance is called Zirvana,

4:45not Nirvana as in Buddhism,

4:50like the Z in Zarathustra.

4:56Nirvana actually means Zero,

5:00it is neither proton or electron,

5:05but neutron.

5:09The real competition is between Ahraman and Hürmüz

5:15This topic needs to be explored much more deeply

5:19We are just discussing it briefly here

5:22But this dialectic can be explored from many different perspectives

5:26it has many aspects: ideological, cultural and political,

5:29mystical, esoteric.

5:33It is a very important topic.

5:37As we saw, there was a political aspect to this process in Zarathustra’s case

5:45Zarathustra went to India to receive Brahman teachings and came back to enlighten his people

5:53In one sense, to create a place like Platos’ academy

5:57He collaborated with the Persian King to establish a new education system to enlighten people.

6:04And his teachings were turned into a written document

6:07with its own rituals and an internal map,

6:13and teachers helped to implement its teachings.

6:25But if his teachings could cause a war,

6:28it shows that they were taken very seriously,

6:32the fear on the part of the Indians was that

6:34if people received these teachings,

6:37they might turn around and destroy their civilization, as they had a very different, opposite understanding of reality.

6:42So check out the power of education

6:46if we come back to modern times,

6:51imperialist forces intent on destroying cultures from inside

6:59used economic incentives,

7:09but what is their main instrument?

7:11It is education

7:14Education is a very powerful instrument if you want to destroy a society

7:19If we remember Ataturk,

7:22he said that it is not enough to win a war fought in the trenches,

7:27but we also need to win the war in the area of education

7:32and lift our people to the level of modern civilization

7:37Winning wars is difficult, they are painful

7:45But wars pass and then the question becomes what to do next,

7:49now we need to develop our own talents

7:52our abilities, and manifest them

7:56How?

7:57Through education.

7:59In Ahura Mazda,

8:01Zarathustra showed that there is both light and darkness in this world.

8:12The dark side is the side of India,

8:15and Ahraman really meant Brahman.

8:23Whereas Hürmüz represents light, Hürmüz is actually Hermes

8:29Academicians are necessarily aware of this point

8:32Serhan: So according to Zarathustra, darkness (Ahraman) is Brahman, or Indian culture.

8:38Yes, and this culture had turned inward

8:43Almost like a deadend,

8:45so that you might get smothered inside the cosmos,

8:47everything is for Vahdet, for unity.

8:49The individual did not exist in the Indian teachings of that period,

8:51we are talking about that particular historical period.

8:54Whereas, when we turn to Egyptian teachings,

8:58we see that the point was to educate the individual.

9:01In the Brahman teachings, the individual is annihilated

9:05Everything is for society there and it is dark

9:10If there is no individual, what is society for?

9:16An education that does not promote individuation and making individuals aware of their rights and freedoms

9:20and can protect them vis-a-vis society symbolizes darkness

9:24Sinan: You had talked about this in your earlier presentations on the Turkish Republic.

9:30Can: I am reminded of the fight between forces of light and darkness in the book ‘Amak-ı Hayal’

9:42Yes, that is a wonderful book by Shehbenderzade Ahmet Hilmi Efendi of Filibe

9:46called 'Amak-ı Hayal’ (Depths of Imagination).

9:50Can reminded us.

9:52There is a passage in that book about Zarathustra

9:54The whole book should be read by our young people.

9:58It includes a discussion of the spiritual path, of the initiation into the path,

10:05it has been translated to today’s Turkish

10:08It is about the growth of the soul.

10:13There is much to learn in that book for modern times.

10:20Serhan: I have not seen anyone who did not appreciate this book

10:23Sinan: Ataturk kept this book by his bedside

10:27Yes, but we are not trying to legitimate this book by saying

10:29that this person or that person read it.

10:31We remind people of this valuable book

10:34We are saying that we need to discuss

10:38all traditions and cultures, classical and modern,

10:51because they all together constitute a unity.

10:57This is what is important

10:59Let’s come back to Zarathustra,

11:01so the eagle, we said, has two wings.

11:03As you know, the symbolic meaning of a wing is ‘relationship’

11:05The wings of angels means relationships,

11:08and angels represent forces of nature,

11:14forces of society, as well as spiritual forces

11:18People who are not aware of these symbols make fun of it saying

11:22So they might say keep on counting the number of angels’ wings!

11:27They say that priests congregated in Hagia Sophia

11:30and while they were counting angels’ wings,

11:31the enemy forces beat them.

11:35This is not something to make fun of.

11:37If we went in this direction, we would need erase all art and literature

11:42Art is based on symbols

11:44It shows while it hides and vice versa

11:54At any rate, Zarathustra,

11:57I am glad that Can reminded us of Amak-i Hayal

12:01Just like in that book, Zarathustra tells a story, a cinematographic story

12:06of Ahraman and Hürmüz fighting on their horses

12:10Who comes between them?

12:13"Izid"

12:15which is actually AhuraMazda himself,

12:18"Izid"

12:19which means Rab,

12:22is the judge, Izid separates them

12:25because He does not want one to annihilate the other

12:27The point here is this:

12:29What we understand as good and bad

12:33is contingent upon which side we are on

12:37If we are on the side of the Indian culture, having dived into the Brahman teachings which emphasize ‘vahdet’

12:46Then we might oppose Hermetic teachings that focus on the individual

12:52We might say that focusing on the individual would destroy Vahdet

13:01But if are on the side of Hermetic teachings,

13:03we might be afraid that the individual would be annihilated inside ‘Vahdet’

13:07That we would disappear when everything becomes the ocean, so we better remain as a drop

13:13Yet, the other side would say, if you stay as a drop, you will eventually dry up

13:18Drops, come together, become a river and flow into me!

13:21if we flow into you, and everything becomes an ocean and we no longer exist and what is the point of all this then?

13:26The ocean is dark, and the drop is light and might cover up the light. But the drop alone might dry up unless it joins the ocean.

13:34So it is necessary to find a middle way

13:38According to Aristotle it is necessary to find the ‘Middle Way’

13:43He says, the middle way is the right way, staying away from extremes

13:46and calls this ‘logic’.

13:49Çilingir Sofrası 70 / Zarathustra 2 *** Translated by Prof.Dr.Nükhet Kardam ***