The Ancient Secret to Finally Breaking Free From Your Past - Steven Pressfield

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1:28Steven Pressfield:Even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until in our own despite, against our will, comes wisdom by the awful grace of God. Through pain, endless pain, comes eventually wisdom, and that's what releases him in the end. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci, back by popular demand with a brand new novel, award-winning author Stephen Pressfield. The title of the book is The Arcadian. Wow. I mean, what an impressive thing. I mean, it was a very quick read for me, by the way. It's great to have you back on the show. We've spoken about all your other great books.

2:15I'm out your books to people. But let's go to the Arcadian. What motivated you to write this? And it's obviously very timely given everything that's going on in the world right now. And so tell us about the idea and the manifestation.

2:29Steven Pressfield:I have a recurring character, as you know, who is the Arcadian. He is the one man killing machine of the ancient world, Telamon of Arcadia. And he's sort of a bit of an alter ego for me. and he's been in three other books two as a minor character one called a man at arms where he was full book was all about him and this is he is a character that's been doomed for crimes he committed in the deep past to live lifetime after lifetime always as a soldier so he kills and he is killed and comes back again and again and this the artadian is the lifetime where he hopes he will finally escape this kind of wheel of damnation so that was uh you know a fruition that i really wanted to bring him to although i tell you i just finished another follow-up of this a prequel.

3:33Steven Pressfield:So in any event, he's kind of my James Reese character, if you'll forgive that. Listen, I love the character. I want to ask you that. Do you believe in reincarnation? Absolutely, I do. I mean, I hope it's true. You know, when I'm on my deathbed, I'm going to be saying, I hope I get to come back. okay so so so what do you think happens you you you believe in it in the hindu sense where you evolve and you move into different eras or you are you stuck in the matrix somewhere steven or how does it how does it work i mean of course i'm just guessing like anybody else but of course we'll say this i mean you have kids so you know that when your children are born they come into this world already with a definite personality right one kid is different from the other complete operating system yep yeah so you have to ask yourself and it's the same like for kittens or puppies right there they so where did this come from you know why aren't we all blank slates and certainly if you introspect into your own self you have to say i was put here for some kind of a reason right i there are many places i don't fit there's maybe one place i do fit i have a calling or something where when I get on that track, I feel a wind behind me, right?

4:54Steven Pressfield:A following wind. So beyond that, I have no idea. I'm just guessing whether, how we do it, but I do believe there are other lives. Well, the first time I met Talamon was, I was a younger man. I was about 36 years old when I read the Tides of War. And I see him very differently today than I did. I'm 62 today. So that was 26 years ago. Today is your birthday? No, no, no, no. Meaning I turned 62 in January. You're in your 62 years. Yeah, I'm a Capricorn for all of those listening at home. But he doesn't age. But yet I feel like he's grown up in this book. There's something about that's different in this book than in the prior two books so tell me what is different in your mind this is the really the first book where he's been aware of his situation you know where he realizes oh i'm i'm on this wheel of damnation and uh and i want to get off of it you know where he starts having flashbacks to the way the book kind of starts or they kind of be the inciting incident even though it happens about 40 pages into the book is a horse is appears following him he's serving as a mercenary and in 15th century italy actually and he recognizes the horse as his horse from 1 ,500 years ago when he served as a Roman legionary in the Holy Land.

6:33Steven Pressfield:And so he's different now because he goes, Holy mackerel, what's going on here? Where did this animal come from? How could this possibly be? Why is it here? Maybe this beast is here to lead me out of this wheel of damnation. So he is a more mature character. Actually, the other book that I'm working on that I just finished, Anthony, is like a prequel back to sort of the young Delamond where you kind of see his attitude, his philosophy, how it formed, which that was fun. Well, I mean, there's another thing going on here. And I have to ask you this question, why the Iberian Peninsula in the 1500s?

7:13And let me just, I'm going to surmise something and then ask you to finish the sentence. You've got Christians, Muslims, and Jews are all colliding on the Iberian Peninsula. So this has happened before. We seem to have it happening right now in our own contemporary history. Is that why you chose this period of time? Or what was the reason? No, actually.

7:34Steven Pressfield:Okay. I chose it for two reasons. One is that it's at the discovery of the new world has just happened like 15 years earlier. And as you know, that plays a part in the story, right? But the other reason is that during the Roman Empire, Spain was a province of the empire. It was called Hispania Ceteria near Spain. And the legions recruited, specifically the 10th legion, Caesar's legion, recruited from Spain. And this was the legion that, when Telemann was a part of it, that he committed his great crime that he's being punished for. So by some, you know, by the wheel of whatever it is, he is being brought back to the place where he enlisted 1 ,500 years earlier.

8:28Steven Pressfield:So that's why in Spain. But beyond that, Anthony, sometimes things just strike you, right, as a writer. I don't even know why, you know, it took me a while to even figure out why. You caught it beautifully. So my follow-up question, though, is this is really a meditation from violence. This is really, you're trying to get somebody to release the curse that he's under, where he's fighting as a Spartan, a Macedonian. You know, we've been fighting. And by the way, we, United States, has been fighting for a generation, Stephen Pressfield. We've been on the battlefield. The U.S. is now in an active conflict with Iran.

9:09We've had active conflicts all over the place, starting with the Gulf War I in 1990. So does this cycle of your novel also fit our times? Are we trying to also get a metaphorical release from the generational warfare that we're under?

9:28Steven Pressfield:You know, you may be exactly right. And if you are, I wasn't aware of it. um so it may sometimes that happens right what the other underlying theme of this story is given the fact that he is kind of under this curse is kind of the question is there justice karma built into this into the universe above and beyond courts of law or anything like that do we have to pay for you know whatever we've done over a lifetime over a lifetime or whatever do we is there i i like to i think in the catholic church you have to kind of say there is and i certainly believe that there is like hopefully the arc of justice been been stored justice right are you catholic i'm not a jewish jewish okay so yeah i'm raised catholic so we definitely believed that but you know what i grew up in your neighborhood right i'm from long island westchester county so i grew up in your i grew up in your i've been the more bar mitzvahs and baptisms i've been in your neighborhood i always was envious of all the catholic kids in class because they got friday afternoon off to go to religious instruction you know i see that it was a wednesday for us out on long island okay so let's go to eastern thought because one of the things that maybe we both believe, if I could have a presupposition here, is that maybe the cycle does end when the lesson is learned, as you're surmising in the book.

11:05And so what was it about the Arcadian? What was it about Telamon? And finally, he's being asked to learn something that he couldn't learn in Thermopylae. He couldn't learn, am I pronouncing it right,

11:19Steven Pressfield:how do you say it oh hadaspi is the river in india you know where alexander finally stopped yeah right so he can't he doesn't learn it there he doesn't learn it on the road to corinth so how what what is the breakthrough what is the breakthrough is it self-awareness even yes there's a moment when he says early con in the book um he's sort of drafted into the the latest war that's going on but he deserts and when he comes back and the priest who's his friend asks him you know why did you do it he says i will never harm another human being again so he comes to that he just unilaterally decides i'm not going to be the soldier anymore i've whatever whatever happens whatever the universe wants to do to me i'm not going to harm another human being again so that is a lesson learned yeah it's a lesson learned for him but it's not a lesson learned for mankind because we just seem to always have not yet not yet exactly so that's my question is this can violence ever truly end or does it simply change form well it certainly has not even had a glimmer of ending in real life history but i i do believe that over the law this is really getting mystical.

12:44Steven Pressfield:But over the long haul, and it may take another 50 ,000 years, the human race has got to get to that place. Like, what is that quote? You probably know this. I don't know exactly. To make gentle the savage heart of man. But that, I think, is the end, if we're ever going to get to it, of salvation for the human race. Thank you for tuning in to Open Book. And if you haven't already please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week we've got a lot more coming and now back to the show well i mean and that's that's you know that's what these say about civilizations they say uh that civilization started zero and zero is where the civilizations evolved and has sentience but it also has violence And so the question is, how long do you need to go through evolution before you realize that the violence is not the answer?

13:42And if anything, we can evolve. The phrase is actually associated with Robert Kennedy. And he quoted it in an extemporaneous speech in Indianapolis on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. So it was April 4th, 1968. He was beside himself. And it's actually paraphrased from Aeschylus, the great Greek tragedian. I know the phrase you're talking about. Please continue. Yeah, but the quote is, to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Ah. He used the version of it again, and it was carved into his grave at Arlington. So if you visit the grave at Arlington, you'll see it there.

14:31But this comes from Aeschylus' play Agamemnon. If you remember what happens to Agamemnon, it doesn't end well for him. No, it doesn't. He kills his daughter, Ephigenia. And when he comes back, Clytemestra kills him. She conspires with her son. She more or less tricks her son into helping her kill Agamemnon. But this is the Greek tragedy, right? This is the sins of the father. yeah asked to the son right in the house of atreus you have these sins and it's an appropriate thing for the kennedys because a lot of people feel like joe kennedy's sins pass through them but but but the sin is a human sin and where i'm going to in this is this is a mystical book uh it's it's different from your other books because you're now forcing the viewer or the listener or the reader to get a little mystical with you and to think about things in the context of beyond the temporal.

15:39And so was that by design, Stephen, or was that also accidental?

15:42Steven Pressfield:Absolutely. Absolutely. That was the whole point of it. Yeah. Tell us why now. I'd feel that if you have a character that is damned by some force, you have to ask yourself, when can he be released when does he has he served his time and then for the question is what force is is enacting this justice is it god is it something built into the fiber of the universe and i don't have the answers to this but i i love to explore stuff like that so i really want i want the reader to buy into the fact that it is possible to be cursed to live lifetime after lifetime and that you're trying to learn a lesson and trying to free yourself.

16:29Steven Pressfield:And so I do want to take a reader on that journey and hopefully kind of make it painless, you know, not hammer somebody right over the head at the start, but ease you into it. It's a beautiful story, but it's also a story of resistance and so uh the war of art which i think is one of your great books if someone said to me um i need to be mentored my first move is here is the war of art read this and then come back and see me because what is it it's about dealing with resistance right it's about the fight ultimately steven you and i both know that the struggle starts right here behind our eyes and in between our ears, the struggle over ourselves.

17:18Isn't that right, sir? Absolutely. Okay. So when I read about Talamon and I think about the war of art, I feel like that's the resistance. And then how do you finally get past the resistance? Tell us what the breakthrough is.

17:36Steven Pressfield:I think in one way, what we're talking about here is the ego and the soul, right? The material, our existence on a material plane and our existence on a higher plane. And we were talking about violence. Violence is a product of the ego, right? You know, we're talking about certain people that we know, but the ego leads us to violence. Right, yeah. The only real cure in the end for each of us as an individual and for the human race as a whole is to move, however we do it, to the level of the soul. On the level of the soul, there's only one emotion, and that emotion is love. But can we get there?

18:20Steven Pressfield:We're mired in this body, in this material ego, right, that has to defend itself and stand up for its position and gets, et cetera, et cetera. So that's really Telemann's odyssey through this story. I'm tempted to talk about that Bobby Kennedy speech that day, which I thought was fantastic. And there's no such, this is the other thing that he said from Agamemnon. Forgive me, this doesn't really have to do with, but it's such a great quote. No, it's important. I want to hear it. He says, and even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until against our, in our own despite, against our will comes wisdom by the awful grace of God.

19:08Steven Pressfield:which in a way is when those greeks knew what they were talking about right i mean is there anybody doing anything like that today but that's sort of telamon's passage through pain endless pain comes eventually wisdom and and that's what releases him in the end so if god bless bobby kennedy for number one for knowing that and then for being able to say it at that horrible moment after the assassination of Juan Luther King. Well, I mean, the thing about all of this for me, you know, when I was in school, I was a classics minor. And so I didn't read the Greek versions of this, but I read all of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.

19:54And in the lessons of reading that is you better learn quickly in life how to deal with tragedy because your life is going to be filled with loss. Right, Stephen? The 35-year-old version of Steven Pressfield is no longer with us, nor is the 35-year-old version of Anthony Scaramucci. Long gone, Steven. And so we have to deal with loss up until the final day where we lose ourselves. And I think the lessons there is can you deal with it and still be at peace? Isn't that fair to say, sir?

20:27Steven Pressfield:I would say absolutely. And that's, again, like what the only way you can deal with that is on the level of the soul, not on the level of the ego, right? because the ego is going to lose you know we're all going to eventually like you say we lose this body and we lose this life and god bless tufts for teaching you that well that's where the faith comes in that's where the faith comes in right you know you know gates of fire i mentioned to you last time we were together uh one of my old bosses john hurtle u.s marine uh he gave me the book and then i learned from some of my friends at west point that it's on the reading list for both all the people at West Point, but also the Joint Chiefs.

21:06American service members have used your book as more of a moral vocabulary for over two decades. And I think you know that it should make you very proud of that. Let's talk about the Arcadian. How does it fit in? What do you want readers of the Arcadian, the ones that are still in the fight, still fighting, Stephen, what do you want them to take from the book about laying down the sword? I think that the process is an evolution, a hero's journey that starts with violence and ends with love, which

21:47Steven Pressfield:really was kind of what the Spartan ethic was about, that thermopoly. You know, the sort of the theme of that story was the opposite of fear is love. Right. And so that is the journey, I think, that that Telamon is on and that all people in this book are on of of getting from the easy answer, which is violence, to the really hard answer, which is quite a Christian answer, really. And this is really a Christian book of of forgiveness and of love and self-forgiveness. I think that's the letters that Paul wrote about love of all things. The most important is love. And to truly love, you have to accept the human frailty and you have to accept human weakness.

22:35And you can't be overly righteous about it. And not only that, with others, you're also with yourself. With yourself, right? You got to forgive yourself. I mean, but Stephen, the work is heavily influenced by your philosophical view of life. And so tell us a little bit about your, not only your writings, but your readings. What are you reading? You know, because Ryan Halliday, I listened to your interview with him on his podcast. I love Ryan, who's our new Stoic, if you will. what are you reading and what are the words of other authors that have influenced you the most

23:14Steven Pressfield:well i'll tell you what i'm reading right now i have to reach here i don't know if you ever heard of this book knowledge of the higher worlds by rudolph steiner no it's uh it's really very telemonian in a way it's about the occult which is really just mystical the same things Christianity Judaism all the great religions have of howdy how do we reach that so in other words I'm not really reading novels right now I'm more interested in that sort of soul passage to whatever the higher dimensions are. And Rudolf Steiner was kind of a serious guy, not a kind of a crazy theosophist or anything like that.

24:06Steven Pressfield:And I recommend that book. All right. Well, you know, I was going to bump to the top of my reading list. Okay. So you've done this podcast before. And so what we do is we, we have five words that we end the podcast with. And so I need you to give me a few sentences on each of these words. Okay, you ready? Okay. Okay, if I say the word warrior, what comes to mind? A series of virtues above and beyond war fighting that are also shared with a mother or an artist or anything like that. And the virtues are, among others, courage, patience, selflessness, the willing embrace of adversity and love of our brothers and sisters and love even of the enemy and particularly as it applies to mothers mothers embody those things you would think would be the opposite of a warrior but it's the same sorry i got a little wordy on that one no not at all but i i hear the word mercy in there as well though yep yes yes okay i don't see too much of floating around in our policy these days right what about heroism ah that's a great one um the uh the journey we're all on is a hero's journey and when we stop becoming just uh passive um victims of our life and actually take our life into our own hands then we stop being a character in a story and we become the hero of the story.

25:44Steven Pressfield:And we all, I think, have to do that. That's Telemann's odyssey for sure. What about the word love, Stephen? Love is the essence of the universe, I believe. And I certainly believe that when we pass beyond this life, if there is another dimension, that that's what it is made of entirely. entirely and if we can live our lives in this material world according to the rules of that world then we've really become enlightened individuals hard to do right yes really hard to do who can do it why why is it so hard to do because we're in this body you know the ego it's the ego material world i mean there's so few people that have done it you know jesus or i've always thought of the 300 Spartans as kind of the thermopoly as the collective version of Jesus in the sense that they knew they were going to die just like he did for the greater good and they accepted it and they went to their deaths that way as a group it's amazing it's amazing all right what about war sir war is the nature in my opinion the nature of life on the material plane that inside our own heads we talked about you and I talked about the war right right we fight a war against ourselves our own base or nature and just as tell him on as a warrior in this material world and finds his way out of it by setting down the sword I think we all that's you know what Robert Kennedy he said to make gentle the life of this world.

27:34Okay, the last word. I'm going to give you the last word. The last word is the Arcadian. Isn't there a little bit of the Arcadian in all of us, Stephen Pressfield?

27:43Steven Pressfield:Yeah, definitely. I mean, hopefully it's universal. In ancient Greece, Arcadia, it's a province of Greece. It was famous for its mercenaries, soldiers that fought for money, as opposed to Spartans and Athenians and Argives and so on and so forth. And Telamon is one who fights for money. In other words, he's just, he's a soldier who fights for the fighting alone and has accepted the odyssey of a soldier as the odyssey of his life. That's why it's called The Arcadian. Hey, listen, it's another amazing story. I'm looking forward to the prequel. The title of the book is The Arcadian, a novel. It's by the legendary Stephen Pressfield.

28:24and you got a couple of my friends on the back of the book too, including David McCloskey, who is one of my podcast buddies. But I got to tell you, sir, it's a phenomenal book and it's always a pleasure to have you on. I have to have you back for the war of art if you don't mind, okay? We're going to book you again if you don't mind. I want people to hear.

28:45Steven Pressfield:I love being on the show with you. You're a hero of mine. I love to watch you on my algorithm whenever you pop up, which is all the time. Thank you very much. It's great to hang out with you. I'm not too shameful of a person. You know, I have no shame, Stephen. So please press the heart button. When you see me pop up, I need the like button. Okay, I do that all the time. All right. Well, I'm grateful to you, sir. Thank you very much. I'm grateful to you. Thanks for having me, Anthony.

29:24Thank you.