WHAT IS THE THIRD LESSON?

It's a deleted scene that got removed because by the time the lesson happened it was very clear that Luke is grumpy and doesn't want to have anything to do with Rey. One of its parts was the shot of Rey running alongside the beach with her lightsaber on that was seen in the first teaser.

 

Until I heard about the deleted scene, I thought

Spoiler

Luke's final act on Crait and his ultimate sacrifice

for the cause could be taken as the third lesson:

taking full ownership/responsibility for failure, standing for what you believe in, giving hope to the subjugated, defying evil up until the end, and being at peace with one's self after great introspection, "following one's bliss" (as Joseph Campbell would say), acting with pure and mindful purpose, and achieving the Jedi ideal of selflessness, using his great power not for attack but for defense, knowledge, justice, to preserve the prospect of hope, by inspiring others through such grand thoughts and actions, against any eventual return of darkness, ultimately to help secure a better future for others in a most memorable way.

Since deleted scenes often "don't count" or are not necessarily canon, and based on the initial description of the scene in question, I would prefer, personally, to maintain this thinking, as it redeems Luke and preserves his legend in such an epic and meaningful manner.

 

I liked your post and maybe you are right.

But I also like to think that the 3rd lesson
was not mencioned to make it obvious that Rey's training was incomplete. A nod to Luke's training with Yoda in TESB. Luke left Dagobah to save his friends in the cloud city, he didnt listened Yoda. Rey left Ach to because she saw good in Kylo, and she didnt listen Luke as well. The arc is now complete.

 

I feel like they also deleted the third lesson because its message is the opposite of the message in TESB. The takeaway of the deleted third lesson was that Luke was not the hero needed at this time, and that Rey’s impulse desire to dive in and help is what the galaxy needed. This is obviously very different from the takeaway in TESB when Luke just dives in to help without thinking the matter through. It was just a bizarre, out of place scene in several ways...although I am curious what this party with Chewie and the caretakers looked like!

 

On a more serious note. I prefer to take it as there just not being a third lesson.
It's very fitting to the running theme of a Sartrean response to the Nietzschean interpretation of the Platonic ontology of the ideal vs actual.

To summarize without essays, Plato says that there is the ideal and the actual, and that the ideal is never capable of being obtained, and only the actual is capable. Nietzsche, grossly paraphrasing, basically emo-goth mopes like Eeyore about this fact and demands to know how we find meaning if the ideal is not possible - "God is dead", Übermensch, et al - to which Sartre basically contains a response to all of this that, paraphrasing, we are all "condemned" to supply our own meaning which means that the value of the actual lies in our own imbuing of the actual with the meaning of the ideal and thus give the beauty of the actual upon the ideal.

The ideal is repeatedly held up and then shattered in TLJ, then follows the existential crises of each character in the face of the ideal not being the actual, and then follows their way of coping with the actual by changing their perceptions of their core assumptions of the actualization of their motives.

Everyone at the beginning believes that their ideal is attainable and everyone faces the brutality that not only is their ideal not attainable, but that the ideal can never be attained, but unlike Plato and more like Sartre post Nietzsche, find that in embracing the actual, they're able to find passion and purpose once again and take on things that scare them and make choices they were too scared (and hiding behind the "ideal" previously) to make before (e.g. Poe's reactions to danger originally were to jump into action with crazy plans because he couldn't stand sitting still in fear, so he idealized heroism as a defense).
I've mentioned elsewhere that Kylo's arc is in reverse of everyone else, so his philosophic take is more like, well...fittingly enough I suppose...Hitler's take on Nietzsche sans-Sartre and goes from finding meaning through reaching for his ideal up until Snoke is killed and he is the supreme leader, which is part of his ideal, but things immediately start falling apart for his ideal because Rey won't join him, and that's when he goes Hitlerian in response because his response to the ideal not being possible is to force it to happen by the will to power. Which of course means that he, unlike everyone else, sees his world crumble all around him and he looses his control of his emotions more and more and becomes more chaotic and existentially frustrated as the story moves on.


So, to bring this all back around to the three lessons.
If the ideal is the classic three lessons of all holy text, and epics narratives of ancient literature, then the actual is like the boy's experience of searching for his answer from Mr. Owl. There won't literally be three as that is the ideal, but the actual is - in this case - two.

It's very much like that scene from History of the World Part II.
"I give you these 15 - *drops, breaks*
Oh...
10! 10 commandments!"

The 3 lessons are, therefore, the following:
1) The Jedi do not own goodness
2) The Jedi history is one of failure


Which, consequently, given the theme of the movie, means the third lesson is "3) The ideal is a lie we tell ourselves to avoid the truth".
But this is never said, and it can't BE said because as soon as you actually say the third lesson in the story, you immediately negate the third lesson which is the story itself.

In this way, the only way to obtain the ideal form of the third lesson into an actuality is to not have the third lesson become actualized as a lesson, but to let it lie as a void that all fall into and from which inherently the lesson is actualized, and therefore the ideal - not stated - is preserved mentally of the third lesson.
This is like saying the only way you can get the perfect circle (Pi) is by not creating a circle, but instead letting nature take its course and by consequence Pi will eventually result on its own and therefore the ideal will have been implicitly expressed.


It doesn't exactly need to be explained in this long-tooth way that I write, but that's how I loved the 3rd lesson when I saw the movie and saw it absent.
I love the ontological beauty that it creates in its absence given the story's theme.

Cheers!
Jayson

 

With the deleted scene taken out, Rey leaves before he gets to the third lesson. Simple.

 

RJ did not care to edit the movie out so most important thing about Rey's training they edit it out how STUPID! I hope this guy never makes another star wars movie. Rey such a Mary Sue , that Rian was like the third lesson not even important to show the audience.

 

I just assumed no third lesson was Luke's second failure. Rey, Finn, Poe all failed twice before getting right. I just assumed Luke had the same structure.

 

The third lesson is seek for yourself.

 

Everyone must have missed the 3rd lesson... guess we'll have to watch the movie again.

 

Some additional thoughts after having mulled my thoughts a bit more around on this (Star Wars geek-out time).

1) As Benjamin Lewis stated, if we take the extreme face-value of the events, then Rey simply left before her training was completed.
This works well, and regardless of how RJ had intended things, it works out pretty well to cut this part if you have to cut something because cutting the third lesson actually creates a connection between Rey's training and Luke's training. This means that, as it stands, both left their training prematurely to run off and save their friends from their entrapped demise which occurred through betrayal of the neutral character (Lando in ESB, and DJ in TLJ).

2) I also now realize the answer to a question I've been picking at: where's the symmetrical counterpoint to Canto Bight? (I discuss the symmetry of the story in this thread.) The 3rd lesson was what appeared on the surface that needed intervention of justice, but actually didn't need it at all, and our character does try to correct the injustice because they can. Meanwhile Canto Bight appears to be paradise, but actually was an inhumane injustice that needed intervention, and our characters do not try to correct the injustice because they can't.

3) This one's definitely not intended by RJ, but nevertheless it is present by consequence during reflection. Due to (2), my previous considerations in my previous post regarding the absence of the third lesson in regards to the idealism theme, and that the third lesson was cut from the story, the story is therefore consequently not the ideal form of the symmetrical story that was envisioned; it is the actual that is depreciated from the intended ideal. Fittingly, then, the absence of the counterpoint Canto Bight scene that is the third lesson, causes the story, as a meta-object, to actualize the third lesson through itself as a medium of art. The edit of the story becomes bound by the idealism vs actual theme it contains. Ironically, this would (again, this is most likely not intentional by RJ) mean that the edit-out causes the film as an actuality of the ideal to cause the ideal to be, since the ideal of the story is the narrative exploration of the failures of idealism and the value of actuality.

Cheers!
Jayson

 

Yep. That’s what I thought too.

 

No you all got it wrong the third lesson Luke did not need to give it to her it was lesson on using the Light sabeir when Luke seen Rey on the clift training with the Lightsabeir he was amazed of her skills, that was the third lesson, which he did not need to teach her, and Yoda confirms this by telling Luke " Rey already attain it" the insight knowledge of the Jedi and their books is the meaning of this and saber skills. So Luke did not need to give her the third lesson.

Just ask your self what main training Jedi need one of them is Light Sabeir skills. Rey already had that and Luke was amazed by her skills of it.

 

I talking about in English, point Yoda said to Luke "that the girl already possessive " meaning the books and it can mean also the insight knowledge of the Jedi ways. He did not say book but book is included in that meaning. Also Luke witness Rey using the lightsaber so for sure every Jedi will teach his student to use a light sabeir and when he see Rey can use one his face tells it all. The third lesson was using the lightsaber.