Plato of the academics
Plato was a Greek philosopher. He was born in Athens in 427 BC and died in 347 BC. He was an aristocrat, grandson of Solon and a disciple of Socrates . Socrates is the main influence of Plato's philosophy, followed by Pythagorean philosophy, Parmenides and Heraclitus . He founded a School of Philosophy called " The Academy ", in which the philosopher Aristotle was . His writings (28 or 30) are characterized, for the most part, by their form of Dialogue, where Socrates is the main interlocutor, in addition to the so-called " Unwritten Doctrines ", in which Aristotle would provide data on those doctrines that only They transmitted orally. It is said that Plato's thought had four stages : Socratic, transition, maturity and old age .
In the maturity stage there are two important Dialogues, namely the Banquet or about Love (the most read Dialogue) and the Republic or about Justice. The latter summarizes, in a way, Plato's thinking. The main structure of Platonic philosophy is the division of the World into Sensitive and Intelligible . In the Sensitive World is the perishable, mutable, it is the world of becoming where only appearances, shadows and images (fantasy) are seen and only obtained from these opinions. On the other hand, in the Intelligible World is the eternal, immutable, the permanent and always ONE, namely the Ideas. The Supreme Idea is Good and is apprehended by Reason (Logos) and Intelligence (Nous).
It can be said, then, that the Sensitive World is a copy or reflection of the ideal World, just as the State is an imitation of the Ideal State. In this way, Plato with the idea of bringing the Intelligible World develops in the Republic the Ideal State and Justice, without complying with political, but also ethical, psychological and educational guidelines.
Blavatsky's Plato
This is what can be found about Plato in any academic book. On the other hand, Helena P. Blavatsky in her work Isis sin Velo shows us Plato as the interpreter of the world who managed to capture in his works the spiritualism and metaphysics of Vedic philosophy, thus revealing the truth, as did the wise men of India. This article is intended, in the hands of HPB studies, to elucidate some points of Plato's spiritual philosophy that traditional commentators disdain.
The myth
To study Plain without his spiritual aspiration is to tear a swan from a wing and pretend to fly. Although the commentators do not eliminate everything that has to do with the divine and transcendent, it would be totally absurd, given the obviousness in the writings - they do subtract spirituality, that is, when they try to explain those t Terms linked to the spiritual empty it of all esoteric content and its relation to the philosophy of India. It is important to bring the philosophy of Plat na these centuries, but it is not fair to fragment it to be more moderna, more filos fica-acad mica . Although, as HPB says, at a time when modern science refuses to give an explanation, it is necessary to turn to ancient philosophy, especially that of Plain 1, because in its philosophy To sum up the science of its time and European and Asian philosophy is included in its doctrines 2, it is not possible to teach only what is appropriate or what the positivist mind allows.
An example of the minimization of spirituality in Plato's philosophy by some commentators is the appearance of the Myth in the Dialogues. In most Dialogues there is a myth (there are approximately 16 myths) that, according to traditional interpretation, appear as an interlude to the true explanation, namely the rational (logos). In this way, it is said that the Myths is mere pre-narrative narration that used souls that did not possess the Logos, and Plain wanting to preserve the tradition rescued the Myths of oblivion giving him the auxiliary position of the Logos. It has been considered that in the Dialogues there is an opposition between the Myth and the Logos or there is a leap from the Myth to the Logos, that is, Plain exceeds Greek mythology and Presocratic philosophers when developing a rational philosophy.
However, HPB tells us that Plato in the Gorgias and the Fedén declares that the myth is a vehicle of great truths, and what he intended was to eliminate the superstitions of magic and the demons using the highest faculty of man, the Intuition, to reach the truth 3 .
Thus, Platonic Myths can be classified as: Psychological, Anthropological, Political and Cosmological. In this opportunity we will mention the Psychological Myths .
Psychological Myths
In the Psychological Myths there are the three processes of the soul : its creation, its fall and the immortality of the soul or metempsychosis :
1.The Myth of the Constitution of the Soul: This Myth is found in the dialogue Timeo 4 and tells how the Divine Father engendered the human soul of another mixture similar and homogeneous to the Divine, from which he created the stars, but divided from the same number as those, endowing her with immortality, but then she gave them "the burial we call body ", but because of the violence of its elements (earth, water, air and fire) it disrupts the orderly movements of the soul, causing confusion, ignorance of its Spiritual nature and its affinity with Ideas. It is so when the soul falls into the world of Maya and begins to live "asleep." The world of senses and illusion is chaos of perception, passions and desires. Only education can awaken the inner spiritual element, for this spirit retains vague and dark memories of its previous state, from which it still yearns to return 5 .
In this way, Philosophy will educate the soul on the path of liberation of the senses to rise to pure thought where truth, goodness and beauty lies. Therefore, “only the nous, or spirit of the philosopher (or lover of the supreme truth) is endowed with wings, because with his high capacity he retains these things in his mind, and when he contemplates them he divides Divinity ” 6 . This analogy of the wings belongs to the Myth of the Carriage with Winged Horses of the Fedro, of which Blavatsky makes reference in several occasions.
2. Myth of the Carriage with Winged Horses : The myth tells that the soul of man is like a Winged Carriage and a charioteer that leads to the two horses that pull it. One horse is white and meek, the other, the black and furious horse . One pulls towards the house of the immortal gods and the other for each of the body, passions and desires. As long as the black horse directs the life of the soul towards excesses and the lack of control, the soul will remain tied to the sensitive World. On the other hand, if the white horse rules, it will lead the soul to beauty, goodness and truth. According to Blavatsky this Myth presents the psychic nature doubly composed of substances belonging to the phenomenal world and linked to the eternal world 7, and on the other hand is the Charioteer or spirit that yearning for that contact with the Divine uses Reminiscence and the Perfect Mysteries to begin in divine wisdom.
The purification of the soul, says Blavatsky, through the study of Philosophy can be rightly compared, as Theon of Smyrna says, with mystical rites or initiation to the true Mysteries . There are five steps: prior purification, admission to secret rites, epoptic revelation, endowment and finally friendship with God and diamond happiness. Philosophy is the initiation to those Mysteries for the restoration of divine bliss.
This initiation to the Mysteries is clearly found in the Banquet dialogue. When Socrates tells that he was initiated into things about Love for a Priestess of Mantinea, Diotima, the commentators downplay the spiritual character explaining that Socrates attended philosophical lessons with this Foreigner of Mantinea, not even recognizing the highly mystical atmosphere that surrounds each passage, and also Plato had already begun in those Mysteries. Porfirio tells that Plato's philosophy was taught in the Mysteries, since his Academy had been a place of Initiation and his Doctrines were esoteric teachings for his disciples, and he managed to apprehend the symbology hidden in the Myths, therefore its importance in the Dialogues . Among their teachings they said that the human soul has a “luminous essence and is highly ethereal and resident in the milky way before descending to the sublunar generation or existence” 8, and for this reason it can only reach wisdom through research from the hidden nature of creation, that is, through mathematical knowledge you can infer the immortality of the soul, in order to be happy after death.
3. The Myths of the Immortality of the soul: This Myth is found in the Gorgias, Fedón and the Republic dialogues. In general they are myths that narrate the destiny of souls after death. He tells us that at the time of Zeus men judged a dying man before he died, but this caused a discontent on the Island of the Blessed, for he began to populate himself with impure souls. Thus, Zeus ruled that men would not know the time of his death, in addition the trial would be in Hades before a court of gods (Minos, Eaco and Radamantis) and bare the soul of man so as not to deceive the judges with beauty bodily. According to the acts that the soul has committed, a path will correspond to it; the righteous to heaven, the criminals to the bottom of the earth . After having spent a hundred years on one of those two paths, the soul has to choose its next life. Most souls are inclined to the life they had before. Next moment the Moiras (Parcas) spun the destiny of that soul, one pulled the thread of life from the spinning wheel (Cloto), the other half the thread of life necessary for that soul (Lachesis) and finally the other Moira cut the thread of life (Atropos).
For that reason, HPB quotes the passage from the Teteeto “ the soul cannot incarnate in the human body, if it has not previously contemplated the truth, that is, the whole of everything that the soul saw when it lived in the Divinity, with contempt for the things we say that they are, and the focus is on what it REALLY IS ”, that is, without first being judged and instructed in the purification of his soul. Unfortunately, After the Moiras deliver the destination, souls are thrown into Lake Letheo or oblivion, and only Reminiscence (the memory in present life) can bring this soul closer to the Divine world.
In conclusion, the Myths are symbols that communicate the two realities or worlds, so it transcends the temporality made so that our Spirit intuits them and knows the truth. In the case of Psychological Myths, they give light to the soul so that it remembers its Divinity and affinity with the Father who engendered it, a One and celestial Being.
Notes
1.Blavatsky p, 10.
2.Blatvatsky p, 13.
3.Blavatsky, p, 11.
4.Plat n, Timaeus 42e-47e.
5. Blavatsky, p12.
6.Blavatsky p, 12.
7.Blavatsky p, 12.
8.Blavatsky p, 18.
Bibliography
Blavatsky H. Iisis without Veil
Plat n, Complete Works.
Author, Rosmery Guerrero, Editor in the Great Family of hermandadblanca.org
