Buddhism:The perfect Enlightened



BUDDHISM: THE PERFECT ENLIGHTENED

Víctor Manuel Guzmán Villena


The Buddha is a real historical character. Although he is among the leaders of the largest religions in the world, never declared himself in any way divine or supernatural. Buddhism teaches that Buddha was born as a man not as God. Attained enlightenment due to conducted research on the nature of reality; myself and the world. This enlightenment did not came through by outside intervention or mystical or supernatural forces. The Way of the Buddha is a way of critical review and the ongoing investigation into the nature of life. The Buddha taught that blind faith and devotion alone will not lead to freedom or to enlightenment, even though they are useful at a certain stage.

Siddhartha Gautama was born around 560 BC in northern India. His father, Suddhodana, was the governor of the district near the Himalayas is now the country of Nepal. Suddhodana shelter his son from the outside world and confined to the palace where Gautama surrounded with pleasures and wealth. Despite the efforts of his father, Gautama one day saw the darker side of life on a tour that tookhim away from the walls of the palace.

When Buddha left his palace for the first time and took and wear the mantle filled with yellow patches of beggars, became an ascetic and wandering holy man, determined to attain enlightenment for the benefit of the world as soon as possible. For six years leading a life under the most rigorous austerity. While he was begging day and night, said that for several weeks ate only a single grain of rice every day, be coming to starved and emaciated. Nevertheless and, in spite of his efforts he felt that the goal of the lighting was avoiding him.

The Buddhism began as an offspring of Hinduism in India. The founder was Siddhartha Gautama. It is not easy to give a precise historical account of the life of Gautama, since no biography registered up to hundreds of years after his death.

Today, big part of the history of his life is wrapped in myths and legends that arose after his death. Even the best historians of our day have several different histories and even contradictory of the Gautama's life.

What Buddha understood finally, after being at the edge of the death from starvation, is searching for the truth must first move away from the extremes of either the passion and self-mortification in order to find the way that means the moderation of the middle Way. Buddha observed that a spiritual life perfectly realized is not a carnival adventure of exhilarious increases and terrified descents.


The lesson earlier described of Buddha left for us is that the happiness and/or the Nirvana cannot be in a life of that he devotes himself, principally, to take care of the sensual gratification (more money, sex, holidays, social position, pride or any other materialistic variant on the topic of more). But, quite surprisingly, Buddha taught us also that a life dedicated to the autodenial, to the autoentreaty, the self-censorship and to the guilt, is the same way dumb and badly directed. The attachment is still the attachment, although it takes the inverse form of autodenial and auto hatred.

The primary doctrine of the Buddhism finds in the truths words or educations of Buddha gathered in the writing and known as sutras. Sutra is a Sanskrit word translated originally like "thread" or "rope". Together with the Sutra, Buddha bequeathed to us numerous oaths and monastic disciplines (known as the Vinaya) and treated (known as the Abhidharma) that explain the psychology Buddhist. These three sets of lessons form the original Buddhist canon, known as the Tripitaka, which translates as the Three baskets or Sets. These are the original teachings of the historical Buddha, in his first version written in Pali

When Buddha realized the perfect lighting, the veils of the illusion fell down of his eyes. Free of the entanglements of the desire, had finally reached the lasting happiness. With the completely open knowledge eye, the truth remained clear of “what it is”. He said that he could perceive and remember hundreds of his past lives; it knew and was comprising the intricate and precise laws of the karma and of the reincarnation; and he was recognizing the effects of the ignorance, the fidelity and the desire. Awake Buddha indicated four noble truths, which it means the facts themselves from the perspective of an illuminated one. Four Noble Truths form the nucleus of the Dharma Buddhist who is the nature of the life that all the beings face difficulties; across living illuminated through one it can come out these difficulties, turning finally in realized, in liberated and free.

Free of the entanglements of desire, had finally reached the lasting happiness. With the eye of wisdom fully opened, became evident the truth of "what it is". He said he could perceive and remember hundreds of their past lives; knew and understood the intricate and precise laws of karma and the reincarnation and recognizing the effects of ignorance, attachment and desire. The Buddha drew up the four noble truths, which means the facts themselves from the perspective of an illuminated one. The Four Noble Truths form the core of the Buddhist Dharma that is the nature of life that all beings faced difficulties; live through the illuminated one can transcend these difficulties, becoming finally, liberated and free.

Dharma: (Chinese: fa) The laws governing the universe, discovered and proclaimed by Buddha, they have not been dictated by a creator, are unalterable and are valid in themselves. There are from time without beginning. Also known as Dharma on the Teaching of Buddha. "Sending the Dharma to the world in the form of rain.

This Dharma that has only one flavor, is grown according to the abilities of each one, as well as in the forest the trees are using rainwater for its growth according to its size. The Dharma of all the Buddhas is always with one flavor, it produces perfection in the world. Through his practice gradually all reach the fruits of the Way. "

Studying the Writing Buddhists (Sutras) we learn the Dharma. The Dharma includes all the methods of practice taught by Buddha, provoking our awakening and the perception of our real nature. They are the means for an end and not the end in itself.

The mind of the living beings is different and this way also it is the Dharma needed to transform them. That's why we say that the thousands of doors of the Dharma are like the varied medicines that treat the illnesses of the living beings. The best Dharma for a being, is that one adapted to his/her nature and circumstances. None is better or worse than other.

"He makes to turn the wonderful and inconceivable Wheel of the Dharma and this way it makes to know the conduct corresponding to the Way of the Lighting (awakening), which destroys forever the sufferings of all the beings".

The First Noble Truth is the difficult life, the suffering exists. The Second Noble Truth is the life it is difficult due to the attachment, because we wish satisfaction in forms that are inherently unsatisfactory. The Third Noble Truth exists for all the possibility of liberation of the difficulties. The fourth Noble Truth: The way of realizing this liberation and lighting is taking a compassionate life of virtue, knowledge and meditation, These spiritual practices include the education of Path Eightfold towards the Lighting

It should be noted that the eight steps toward enlightenment in the Noble Eightfold Path are:

Wisdom
1. Right View
2. Right Intention

Ethical Conduct
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood

Mental Development6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration

Although they are listed in numerical order, the intent of Buddha was the steps being taught as a circle or as an eight-wheel spokes, with interconnecting links to help us develop the three core values of Buddhism: wisdom, ethics and meditative conscience.

The wisdom, ethics and meditative conscience known as the three trainings or superior lighting. being inseparable, they complement each other as a tripod or as the three sides of a single bright jewel. The awakening of our inner Buddha depends on achieving these qualities in our life.

THE NIRVANA


Only the one who manages to conquer all theirs wishes reaches the Nirvana, the entire lighting, and after a dead person is not reborn again, but enters the parinirvana, finishing thus with any earthly suffering. The Nirvana is reached following the way of the liberation, in a simple life dedicated to the meditation and completely liberated of the weight of both, the vices and the virtues.

Nirvana is an eternal state of being. It is the state where the law of karma and the cycle of rebirth come to an end. It's the end of suffering, the state where there is no desires and the individual conscience comes to its end. Although to our western minds we could dream like the annihilation, the Buddhists would object such an idea. Gautama never gave an exact description of the Nirvana, but his most nearby answer was this.

"There is that dimension where there is neither earth, nor water, nor fire, nor wind; neither dimension of the infinitude of space, nor dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, nor dimension of nothingness, nor dimension of neither perception nor non-perception; neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon. And there, I say, there is neither coming, nor going, nor stasis; neither passing away nor arising: without stance, without foundation, without support [mental object]. This, just this, is the end of stress."

For many the Buddhism is a religion, others affirm that it is a Science of the Mind, also it is considered to be a Philosophy of the life and some of them adopt it like a Psychological Therapy.

Buddhism focuses on the mind, and is an effective therapeutic way to deal with the problems of life.

Buddha reached the lighting in the twinkling of an eye and founded the first religion without God. God exists but we can not know Him. Just knowing ourselves, we can get to Him.

The Esoteric Egypt



THE ESOTERIC EGYPT
Víctor Manuel Guzmán Villena

Consecrated writers of the classic antiquity like Herodotus, considered the father of history; Plutarch, the teacher of portrait and the biography and Pythagoras, of the mystery of the numbers, speak to us of Egypt like a culture highly advanced, wise and deeply initiatory in the strict esoteric. And in the middle as the essence or substratum it was the unsuspected world of the ritual sacred magic and that was not another thing than the intuitive process that led to the different sciences and that started from a fundamental statement which recognized the man in four existential levels: the animal body, the intellectual body, the astral body or sublimated and the essence of life.

Ancient Egypt

The history of ancient Egypt can be divided into three periods: Old, Middle and New Empire. To realize its historical importance and initiatory the Old Empire dates back to 5 thousand years before our era, was centered spiritual and the sacred city of Memphis. The Middle Kingdom had its spiritual center in the city of Thebes, ranging from the XI until the Dynasty XXI, spanning 25 centuries and was destroyed by hordes of nomads from the famous Hittites.

The New Empire had its center of spirituality in Sails, the famous city of palm trees, where stands the personality of the pharaoh Ramses II, and the dynasty of pharaohs Senusret, who built and rebuilt Egyptian power who endures through time in his major monuments located on the banks of the Nile. Then came the ultimate decadence with the occupation and of Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria. After the death of Cleopatra, last queen of Egypt (XXXI Dynasty), the country was completely dominated by Rome.

Deep knowledge

Egyptian civilization was not built randomly and without any archetypes; quite the contrary all these sacred monuments testify deep knowledge of plane geometry, geometry of conical space, physical corner and a higher metaphysics consciousness.

The ancient Egyptians were a superior race where it was developed powers that now we call them supra-normal and that is the undisputed hallmark of who bears the flamboyant star of a superior consciousness, and to give exact example we have the pyramids, whose construction only could be done for those who knew and dominated the psychic power, who came to know the dematerialization intimately linked to the geometry of a conical space nonlinear but spherical. And the same provision in the construction of the axes of these pyramids testified in impeccable shape over all, a thorough knowledge of astronomy similar to the advanced science of the Mayans.

The passage from the entrance to the burial chambers of the pyramids were watching or oriented towards the polestar which occupied - by that time, a very different place from today, and if so, is accepted that they should know the retrograde movement of the equinoxes which implies that the Polar Star re-match with the same location after a period of 25,796 years, the exact duration of those cultures that few know with the name of Atlantis and Lemuria and dividing the globe at that time in only two hemispheres and , we are told - in the famous tales of Plato, whose contents are loaded with mysticism and occultist revelations as are the dialogues Timaeus-, that our planet was accompanied by two moons, a phenomenon that he had to do much with the lengthy periods of time in which they were presented the race of giants and of which the Bible refers to Samson, Goliath, Holofernes and all others.


The Egyptians personified all the forces of nature. The people educated in science or initiatory Theosophical revelation worshiped the god Ra, or the solar force, and that warranted to know beforehand the esoteric prayer to Isis. Amon meant in theirs believes the sun that brought to mind the idea of a circle without beginning or end, that later gave principles for the philosophical statements of the eternal return, philosophical idea of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Sub was called the land, Nut was called celestial space, a symbol of water, crocodiles Thipon next to the sacred meant sin. But all these elements unified in a philosophical monotheism which called Amon Ra, it means the sacred name of the divine sun, the perpetual light, the Fiat Lux spoke to the Bible, or the light mercury, active in the process of medieval alchemy . Amon meant veiled or hidden to the profane curiosity of the hidden splendor, just visible in the light of the initiated mystics of higher consciousness, mystical delegates to the heirs of Memphis, Heliopolis, and Elephantine Says.

Esoteric initiatory

The secret science of Egyptian initiation esotericism is represented by a candle and a snake, these two characters had a significant meaning, one for the magnetic force or the vital fluid and the other to the principle of good or principle of evil.

The snake so weakened in the biblical cosmogony is far more noble and mysterious. The snake is hidden in the ground, the man is hiding in his own conscience, internalized, searching for the auto-realization. The snake away from the means of sin or fall, means the spirit of divine science. Birth of the egg and makes this allegory intimate relationship with a man born of the egg from her mother's womb, with their spirit can rise to the field of secret knowledge.

On the other hand the snake represents the man who is dragged into the misery of the sexual world or material, but that can raise their intuition to levels unimagined. The snake often changes its skin, almost cyclical, and this is the most obvious fact that we have at hand to talk about the mankind like the serpent is a mutant in different degrees of awareness, while the flamboyant star further illuminating the sixth chakra at the center of the man.

And finally the snake like divine animal; to the esoteric Egyptian religion, for its habit of wind in itself tells us that what ended can start again, that is the axiom of the Catholic Church that with the death culminates the life is without use The death does not exist simply because the conscious life of mankind is transformed.

The sailing ships that is driven by wind the energy is invisible but with invisible material power, according to this, the magnetic force, the flowing electricity or electroplasm is not what you see, do not have corporeality, is not with real physical appearance, however their influence, their use is real and indisputable.

The sail, one that is the natural engine of locomotion in marine vessels symbolizes the healing magnetism that had its origins in ancient Egypt and that is only the normal transposition of vital force or electro plasmatic fluid escaping from the hand and projected upon the recipient. The head at the magnetism is regarded as the generator, as the highest coil of the human psyche, and here the Egyptians were undoubtedly deep knowledgeable and scholars of different modalities like the magnetic force present in the electro plasma egg of human beings, under the action of force contrary to the polarity.

What is the power contrary to the polarity? It is the existence of the forces positives and negatives, and if is referred to the Bible, the man being taken from the dust of earth and means negative polarity that corresponds to the right side of his body, while the woman taken of the first rib below the source of life that is the heart of man, and belongs to the left side that is the force of life, the divine spark, the positive pole, the distribution of the magnetic fluid is not a simple hands imposition, given that, we must remember the ceremonial dress of the Egyptian pharaoh who had a helmet and that its top was projected as a figure of snake, and we have these characters in the various museums and for whom that have the inside look can read that the head is an accumulator of psychic energy that is always transform by the arm and left hand.

No 34 The Stones of Power

Emerging from the Atlantis to the Sanctuary of the Spirit
Letter Nº 34


THE STONES OF POWER
VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

In the enormous variety of sizes, forms, qualities, colors and degrees of purity, the stones are a solid expression of cosmogonies and the hierarchies of the universe, being able to serve to the human being like support and symbolic vehicle as knowledge, and also - just as all the sacred symbols as awaken consciousness and computer of the mind.

Following the hermetic principle that says; What is at the bottom is equal to the above, and what is above, is equal at what is at the bottom", we could affirm that as well as the stars are the reflection of the sensible manifestations of invisible energies that are in Metaphysical dimensions, in the same way the mineral kingdom is the terrestrial expression of those celestial energies in stony forms "they mature on the core of the Earth ".

As much the common stones, that they represent the ordinary stars; like semiprecious and the precious ones, related to determined zodiacal stars and constellations; and also the metals, that are in their interior and pick up the planetary energies, until arriving at the diamond, symbol of the angular stone. The minerals constitute a symbolic code and express a magical and sacred language that the antiquity knew from remote times. Is believe they attract certain energies, since they serve as altar and place of residence of the Gods; they are able to realise miracles and treatments, because they have supernatural properties, symbolic -magicians and; from always were used like amulets and talismans , and in many cases like oracles through which some towns have forged their destiny


Sacred stones

There are certain stones in all the traditions that particularly have been venerated, since the old ones considered that they owned a special meaning, they took them (as the own Grail) like house of the deity " betilos" ('Beith-el' in hebrew), symbols of the fundamental center that after the fall was hidden inside the core of the Earth (and of the stone), and whose power and brilliance settle down to the aim of the cycle.

This center that also is represented in the symbol of the Sacred Mountain, as the Meru mount, the Sion and until the Golgotha to mention solely some of the innumerable sacred mounts which they practically appear in all the traditions, considered by many towns as residence of the Gods and shine in all their splendor during his ascending phase of the cosmic cycle, but are hidden in the underground world (in the cavern and the stone) in its descendant phase.

Equal meaning of divine residence has the black stone that represents the mother goddess Cybele or the Omphalos of the oracle of Delphi who was represented by a stone, symbol of that center and dowelled of the Gods. This stone represented the point of communication between the sky, the Earth and the underground world, we must mention dolmens and menhires Celts, as well as the Egyptian obelisks that played a similar role.

Some of those betilos are meteorites, fallen stones of the sky as it is the case of "black stones" that they appear in the traditions, so one of the walls of the Kaaba in Mecca and the black stone of the Cybele. To these stones a divine origin is assigned, because the center that they represent is in truth an axis that serves like descent road for the cosmic energies to the earth and as ascent from the Earth to the sky.

Subtle energies

The innumerable stone sculptures and carved stones that they have represented the different Gods, spirits, angels and ideas in all the towns happen to represent the subtle energies and the live of the humankind, being understood what they mean and transferring his mere formal and material aspect to use them like support towards the knowledge of superior forces deposited in them, those that will be to transmit to they are able to receive them. The latest that we have mentioned with respect to the stone is valid for any sacred symbol in particular.

So it is the case of certain prehistoric axes that they appear everywhere and they are one more a demonstration of the presence, in the particular traditions, of certain symbols that belong to that we called the Fundamental Tradition, as it is the stone axe of Parucu Rama and the hammer of Thor, origin of masonic mallet, instrument able as much to thunder against as to illuminate the essence.

Not only symbols but transmitters

The pectoral ones, the rings and the crowns of kings and height priests who always were adorned with precious stones, transmit to their carriers the forces and qualities that they symbolize. I reproduce the text of a manuscript of century XVII about the symbolism of stones of the crown of San Eduard, in whom " is denominated; diadem that assures triumph".


These stones are:
1) Topaz: symbol of the virtues that must exercise the king;
2) Emerald: symbol of the justice of the king;
3) Sardonic: symbol of the elevation of the king;
4) Crisolita: symbol of the wisdom and the prudence of the king;
5) Chalcedon: symbol of the courage of the king;
6) Jacynth: symbol of temples and the sobriety of the king;
7) Jasper: symbol of the abundance that must enjoy the town;
8) Crisópalo: symbol of the search of the celestial things in the king;
9) Beryl: symbol of the detachment and the purity of the king;
10) Sapphire: symbol of the continence of the king;
11) Amethyst: symbol of the real function that the king does not have to leave;
12) Onyx: symbol of humility, charity and sincerity of the king.

Also the fossil concretions, the chorales and the pearls, that in diverse places were used with talismans and curative aims; just like bezoar or stones that form inside the bodies of the animal that in all place are considered of magical value; and the calls gamahez that is stones with reliefs of vegetable forms, animal, human or geometric that are drawn naturally in them and that have been venerated in all the traditions.

We can see how for the traditional thought the symbols of the nature like the stone, and the same with the vegetables, animal and the cosmos, are carrying ideas, forces and subtle energies that of some way in them are deposited. They constitute an order and an archetype model whose understanding can make that possible the man - that contains within himself all those energies and forces, because synthesizes them and governs -communicates with more real aspects and superiors of themself and finally obtains the finding of that mysterious stone that is, for who can transfer the appearances of the things, the unique true treasure - hidden in the deepest regions of our being to we could aspire.

The Perfect Proportions




THE PERFECT PROPORTIONS



VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA


Leonardo worked hard to get knowledge in all manifestations: the art, science, the technique… It was convinced that “the knowledge did not occupy place” and trusted blindly the capacity of the man to explore all horizons. After half century, his figure became a referring one for the contemporary culture. His spirit of curiosity and his thirst of knowledge continue astonishing many people who follow the same interests as him.

Just inaugurated the third millennium, the image of Leonardo invites to a reflection: In the era of the specialization of the knowledge, computer science and technology, has use a scholar, a total wise person like him. He was ahead of his time. He wanted to project without restrictions his ideas and discoveries, but his bold intelligence exceeded the limits of understanding of any human being of his time. Their dowries of visionary were amazing. For example, in the field of aviation. His studies on flying machines anticipated the effect of elevation and the one of propulsion, the stability and the balance. The wings that he outlined applied in the first airplanes. And his aerial sketches considers theoretical ancestor of the helicopter.

The man of the Vitruvio by Leonardo is a drawing by pen and ink, realised in a great leaf of paper (34 xs 24 cm.), that is conserved in the Academy of Venice, it was in its origin an illustration for a book titled Of Divine proportione (the divine proportion) of the Franciscan friar and innovating mathematician Luca Pacioli (1445 - 1517. He opened his colloquy on the divine proportion with a commentary on the proportions of the human body, observing that in the humanity.

All kinds of proportion and proportionality can be found and produced at the behest of god through the intimate mysteries of nature. Commentaries as this one makes clear why Leonardo would have found in Pacioli a mind in affection with his. For both the harmonic proportions of the human body were not more than one of the many intimate mysteries of the nature that reflected the perfection of  nature.

In his Studio (Real Academy of Venice), also known like the Vitruvio, Leonardo made a vision of the man like center of the universe, when being inside in a circle and squaring. The squared one is the base of the classic : the unit of the squared one is used in all the classic architecture, the use of the angle of ninety degrees are bases of the Latin- Greek architecture. In it an anatomical study is realized looking for the proportionality of human body, the classic or ideal canon of beauty. It follows the studies of Vituvrio"s architect (Marcus Vitruvius Pollio) Roman architect of century I AC, to whom Julio Cesar, orders the construction of military machines. In time of Augusts  he wrote ten volumes of his work “Of Architecture”, that deals with about the hydraulic construction, solar quadrants, mechanics and its applications in civil architecture and military engineering. The man of Vitruvio is a clear example of the globalizing approach of Leonardo that development very quickly during second half of the decade of 1480. He tried to tie, the architecture and the human body, an aspect of his interpretation of nature and the place of the humanity in the “global plan of  things”.

Leonardo empirically corrects the errors of the measurements of Vitruvio, obtaining the measures, surpasses the old canon and recreates an illustration of the descriptions of Vitruvio that is considered until today the most perfect. The drawing represents a man in two different positions that correspond two phrases of the text.  The one that has the legs together and open and the extended arms horizontally illustrates the sentences written under the drawing: As much apre I'omo nelle braccia quanto è sua altezza, that is to say, the width of the extended arms of a man is equivalent to its height. The other figure, with the separated legs and the raised arms, expresses a specialized vitruviana rule more: “If you open the legs as much as to diminish your weight in 1/14 and raise the extended arms until the ends of the middle fingers are at the level of the top of your head, you will find that the center of your members extended is the navel and that the space between the legs is an equilateral triangle”.

The Anatomy

In the human body the central point is, by nature, the navel. Then if we located a man lied down on his back, with the extended hands and feet and a compass centered in the navel, the fingers of their hands and their feet touch the perimeter of a circle that we draw up from that point. And as well as the human body produces a circular contour also can be formed a figure squared from him. Since if we measured the distance between the plants of the feet to the arms and the crown and applied that measurement to the extended arms we will see that the width is just as the height, as it happens to the flat surfaces that are totally square.

Part of the force of the drawing resides in the interrelation of abstract geometry and the resulting physical reality of the observation. The body of the man is schematic but their contours and muscles are perfectly drawn. The feet seem to rest on a inferior line of the squared or to press the curve of the circle. The double figure produces the sensation of movement that could be the one of a gymnast or the one of a man who raised and lowered the arms like wings of a bird. The body is drawn with the clean and austere lines of a diagram, but the face appears tried about a very different way. It is more intensely worked, more dramatically shaded; it watches to us with angry expression. The characteristics in this sense respond to an ideal or prototype.

And, nevertheless, the whole drawing seems to be a realistic representation of those abstract biometrics symmetries, so that the severe personage enrolled in the circle turns out to be, not a number, but somebody, a man of penetrating eyes deeply shaded and thickens hair and curly combing with a line in the middle. It can to say that is at least some elements of self-portrait in “Man of Vitruvio”, the figure that represents the natural harmony also symbolizes the man equipped with an extraordinary capacity to understand it, to the artist-anatomist-architect who was Leonardo da Vinci.

The recognition on the part of the Master Leonardo of the concept of the divine proportion was reflected in his diverse anatomical works. He had the idea to realize a great work with detailed reproductions of the human body including studies of compared anatomy and physiology. The depth and rigor of their investigations took him to indicate the first theories on the muscular spasms in the cardiac valves. Some wanted to see in these inclinations a morbid motivation, but the certain thing is that Leonardo stayed faithful to his destiny: to be explorer of the knowledge.

A good example is the series of drawings that created in the final stage of his life under the title of “Visions of the end of the world”, where the fantasy and the reason reached an incomparable level. Leonardo felt attracted by all the natural sciences. By means of his precursory anatomical investigations he tried to understand the most recondite secrets of the body and to enter the same marrow of the creation, and in this process he arrived at a new understanding of the health and the treatment, understanding that amazingly prophesies the holistic approach of many present doctors , he wrote, and believed that to maintain a good health the harmonious integration of the elements of the body and the soul was essential.Thus, he practiced dissections in a hospital, anatomical works, observations of the flight of the birds and studies on the nature and the movement of the water. Fantasy and reason: These, indeed, were the ingredients that fed the spirit on one of the most fascinating personalities of history: Leonardo da Vinci.

The studies that did Leonardo Da Vinci, for its universality of its certainties that have served to contemporaries practitioners of the alternative medicine, among them doctor Dale Schusterman, one of the most efficient and mighty therapists of the new generation, settles down the foundation of the philosophy that underlies his work with a language extraordinarily similar to the Leonardo: "The human body and the model of energy that surrounds it is a miniature replica of a more comprehensive and universal order. This doctor express in his study that the great traditions of the knowledge, including the Jewish mysticism like cabala is based on the acceptance of which the human has been created to image of a cosmic being. Therefore, the humanity would have to be able, like Da Vinci, to see the cosmic design of our human form. Aside from which our form reflects a superior model, our human qualities like beings are the same like that the divine ones, like a drop of water contains the same properties that the ocean.

Therefore the forces that govern the cosmos in the macro level govern to the individual in the micro level. The life is one, and all forms are interrelated in enormously complicated whole, although inseparable one. The underlying unit transforms itself into a bridge between the microcosm and the macrocosms.  The Master Da Vinci tried to understand that the totality of the form and the substance of the man to deepen in what is life, what is the health. Remember that the the paradigm of healing determines the quality of life. If you cultivate an awareness of the unity of body, emotions, mind and spirit, you will discover a deeper sense of the fullness of the divine proportion

No 31 History of one of the most Famous Paintings

Emerging from Atlantis to the Sanctuary of the Spirit
Letter No. 31



HISTORY OF ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS PAINTINGS

VÍCTOR MANUEL GUZMÁN VILLENA


The mural painted by Leonardo after a long and arduous study and three years of intense development, was so new, so original that would revolutionize the art of the West. Despite the ravages of time and the elements (for humidity and strong tempera technique used by Leonardo Da Vinci) and restored several times, there is still the traits of stupor, age, fear and character of the apostles in contrast with the white tablecloth and the colours of their garments.

The masterpiece of Leonardo Da Vinci astonished the humanity with its splendid grandeur and in recent years has been promoted to explore more in terms of symbolic and semiotic, due to the writer Dan Brown's novel entitled The Da Vinci Code and equally by the movie adaptation of the screenplay for this novel. His reading and fame has caused, like contagion, increased the interest in books related to the life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci, paintings and his esoteric school of The Priory of Sion, and the legend of St. Grail, the pentacle and the number of gold.

On any given day, thousands of people come to the old monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, to admire a mural, painted 509 years ago that occupies a very special place in the culture of the world. The immortal Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci, which represents the last supper of Jesus Christ with his disciples on the occasion of the Passover, has probably inspired more books, articles, poems and dissertations than any other piece of art, with the possible exception a portrait done by the same hand of the magician: The Mona Lisa. In truth, are known for the most of us the figures of Jesus and the apostles, as they appear in the dramatic painting, that the set would have been hardly more indelibly printed on our imagination if the work of Leonardo has a true representation of that biblical event.

Leonardo was 42 years old when Ludovico Sforza, duke of Milan, then the most powerful man in Italy, commissioned in 1494 to decorate the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the Duke had chosen the church's new monastery for their devotions , often stayed to take the midday meal with the Dominican friars in a vast domed chamber measuring 35 by nearly nine meters. For more than a century it was customary to decorate the convent refectories depicting the Last Supper, to remember the sacrifice of Christ to who started bread and drank wine. But no painter had been really fortunate to try so hard topic.

Although at the time the Italian Renaissance was going through its climax stage and the arts flourished in every corner of the sunny land of Italy, for Leonardo the painting was a secondary activity. Having already achieved great fame in his hometown Toscaza for his inventor genius, had entered the service of Duke as a military engineer, an expert on hydraulics and musician. When not engaged in designing machines of war or draw channels, studying mathematics, anatomy, dynamic botany perspective and the flight of birds. Most of his contemporaries thought he was a magician.

Leonardo was the magician who, along with the painter Leonardo, faced the north wall of the refectory where he painted the monumental figure of Christ seated at the table with his disciples. The murals from the same evangelical episode that can still be admired in Italy thirteen figures show relatively rigid and disconnected from one another, they say little of the human drama of the scene.


THE SECRET OF HIS MAGIC

Leonardo spent long hours studying the peasants that he had come to his studio, and well covered sheets and sheets of paper with notes of heads, hands, clothes. Only then began to represent the scene that he wanted. Said in his book of notes: "One has to drink and turned to pose the cup in place. Another intertwined fingers and re-gazing at his neighbour. Another open hands with palms outward, increasing the shoulders up his ears and mouth expresses amazement.

Leonardo was not satisfied with mere appearances."A good painter should paint two things," wrote later in his text on the art of painting: "The first thing is easy, the second difficult, therefore, it must be expressed through gestures and movement of the members. The mural painted by Leonardo after a long and arduous study and three years of intense development, was so new, so original that would revolutionize the art of the West. The painting occupies fully eight meters and a half of the wall, and the strength of the effect is partly due to its colossal dimensions.

Suspended over our heads, the figures are almost two meters tall. They are sturdy craftsmen and fishermen of Galilee, seated at a table long and narrow as the monks of the convent of refectories today. It is a dusk from the top of the spring. In the home of a wealthy Jerusalem has prepared a farewell dinner. Jesus Christ has just utter the words: "One of you will treason me", which has resulted in his twelve companions the effect of lightning. These, grouped in threes, are four agitated clusters, two on each side of the master. Even we believe to hear what they say. Philip, the third to the left of Jesus, seems to protest: “You know me; I am innocent”. " It is clear that the Thaddeus fifth to the left of Jesus Christ is saying to his neighbor, dug Simon: I knew it! There are a traitor among us!

Peter is tilted toward his left side to ask to his companion of the table the Lord who is the traitor; impatient, he plays on the shoulder of the personage, while his right hand holds a knife. Hence we look at the snatched whole body of the astute fisherman and whom soon betray him three times. . John, "the beloved disciple of Jesus," is the most beautiful of the group. But that character is also woman's face, it may be Mary Magdalene, her companion (here's all the magic and mystery of the play) is the youngest and most beautiful of the group sat to the right of the Master, tilted his head in silent grief , Making an eloquent contrast to the rough impetuosity of Peter. But only Leonardo could paint it that way. Study in depth the principles masculine and feminine and obtaining the balance among them. Reminds us the tantra yoga, in which male and female join together to become something divine that transcend gender.

Here we can be asked: if Leonardo had some information of the content of the Gospel of Judas. Since the first reading the Gospel of Judas is revealed as a document clearly Gnostic. The Eastern Gnosticism was a philosophy that reached its greatest strength around the century 2 and 3 of the common era, and borrowed several elements of Judaism and Christianity. The later documents in the New Testament shows the first clashes with Gnosticism, but it is up to the century two when the Gnostic begin to produce dozens of "Gospels" and that confrontation occurs in all their extension. For Gnosticism, summarized, the world is the creation of an evil god, the god of the Old Testament, and human beings are emanations of the true God, much more powerful and ancient, divine spark trapped in corruptible bodies and unimportant.

Hence the marking asceticism and denial of the body is a key aspect of Gnosticism. It is only through a secret knowledge that reaches the true liberation and reintegration into the cosmos and everything. The document is a papyrus, dating from the fourth century, but is believed to be a translation of a Greek text of the year 187. Most of the biblical gospels were written, what is believed between 50 and 80 years after the crucifixion of Christ. It is written in Coptic, the ancient language of Egyptian Christians, the document was reportedly discovered in the late 70s in Egypt, in a limestone tomb very deteriorated. . Since then it has passed through the hands of several antique shops, many of them ignorant of their true importance.

The manuscript reproduced allegedly talks between the two men and pointed clearly that by betraying Christ, Judas was in compliance with a divine mission. It has also been able to determine that according to this gospel, Christ gave instructions to Judas to betray him with the following words: "Thou shalt be the apostle cursed by all others. You, Judas, offer the sacrifice of this body of the man that I am covered. In another hugely significant part of the manuscript, Jesus tells Judas: "Thou shalt be the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by generations, and come to reign over them

Despite the turmoil prevailing, the two halves of the set are beautifully balanced. On the other aspect, the four major groups are intertwined by their hands, forming a bridge from one group to another. Those hands point to the figure of the Master, calm center of that storm. His head is framed by soft blue light of the evanescent landscape that looks through the open door behind Jesus, reflects a spiritual excels makes that figure one of the most beautiful have been painted ever.

Matteo Bandello The writer, whose stories were later inspire some dramas of Shakespeare, was a student at the convent at the time that Leonardo was painting the mural. "I watched Leonardo," he writes, "who worked from dawn to dusk, a time without leaving the brush. Then came two, three or four days when they did not do anything but sit for an hour or two looking at the painting and tried to examine their figures. Leonardo had been engaged for many years to the new science of perspective, and in this case brilliantly solved the problem of creating an illusion of depth. . Go back to the viewer, away from the wall, and you will find that the room represented in painting, with its open windows, is an integral part of the same refectory. Follow with eyes the lines leading to the heart of the mural (the beams of the roof, the edges of the table) and verify that intersect in the right temple of Jesus, strongly appeal that attracts the gaze toward the master. Thus, for the monks who took the food in that place, Jesus Christ and the apostles ate not in the wall, but with themselves.

The illusion helps the care with which Leonardo painted objects even less important: the tablecloth, gold in a style that is still in Italy, the pewter dishes, glasses, in a word the same utensils that the monks were using in their table. Glossy red wine in the glasses, the bread seems fresh, and fish, fruit and the remains of ram tell us what has been the menu. The table of the Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci is also one of the greatest died natures of the world.

PERENNIAL OF GREATNESS

Finished painting in 1498, the Duke rewarded Leonardo with a vast property. From the artist's death, which occurred in 1519, the famous mural has been reproduced in fresco, oil paintings, mosaic, ivory and silver. Long before photography was born, the masterpiece had been issued at all sites of encounter of people through engravings in black and white and gaudy chromium. Goethe dedicated one of his most brilliant essays, the English poet William Wordsworth sang "Grace serene, ethereal, love that splendid in the face of the savior." Ironically, to create their immortal works, Leonardo put in it the seeds of which had been destroyed. Usually, the murals painted at fresco.

This unique technique consists in mixing pigment with water to apply it directly on the cast fresh and moist, to absorb the paint, turns partly to this an integral part of the wall, and so the freshness of the color is preserved through the centuries. But the fresco painters must work quickly before the wall to dry, while Leonardo wanted to move slowly.

To that end, first applied a surface of white stucco on the plaster, then painted in tempera on dry surface, as if painted on wood or canvas. In a dry room this method might have given a good result, but the city of Milan is famous for its moisture. As the moisture condensed on the cold wall, the stucco that served as a basis for the painting began to decompose and form blisters that break up in flakes. They had not spent 20 years and visitors commented deterioration of the mural.

That was how lots of details disappeared forever that appear in old copies, for example, the salt cellar that Judas knock over with the elbow. In addition, the intervention of a series of improvised restaurateurs, many of whom are charlatans who wore "secrets"remedies, hastened the destruction of the mural. Was applied oil, new paint, varnish. Completed the Second World War, was made a full and thorough restoration of the work. Took off seven superfluous layers of paint before reaching the original brushstrokes. When complete, nearly all the splendid colors of Leonardo (the red robes of Jesus and Magdalene, the blue of the meandering river in the distance) they shone with a magnificence forgotten centuries ago.

The monastery, along with the pictorial treasure, is now owned by the Italian government. Although the current visitor sees almost no more than a ghost of what was the original light of Leonardo, the image of the Last Supper is complete. As much as it beauty has faded in part, the mural retains its grandeur and, defying the time and its destructive agents, continues to exert his magic power over the generations.

Dialogue of the Platonic Love




DIALOGUE OF THE PLATONIC LOVE


VICTOR MANUEL GUZMÁN VILLENA

The other important exhibition about love, Plato made it in the dialogue called The Phaedrus. Although this is an exhibition of another character about love, the fundamental expositions of both dialogues match, although their lines of unfolding vary considerably.

Everything begins with a discussion based on a speech of Lysias on the issue of whether it is better for a young person to grant his favors to a person who does not love him rather than someone who loves him. Lysias indicates that the lovers acting under impulses that are chained by the passion produces remorse and that appear in them like disease.

In addition, these are boasted of their conquests and soon they leave them, they are jealous of any company and they only orient their love to the fleeting flower of youth. However, those that are not impelled by the love, give a lasting and independent friendship of the sexual, because they look for the company without putting the glance in the immediate and ephemeral pleasure. Their affection do not arise from a passion, but from the search of a common purpose.

Although this speech had the merit of balance, prudence is misleading to the extent that confuses many different realities by not defining the terms that the author employs. The love (Eros), is certainly not the friendship (Filia), but no one denies the other, since they are both valid expressions of nature.

The following speech of Socrates will try exactly to make conceptual precision to the debate. Socrates begins making a diligent definition of love that says to us this one is desire, but even those that do not have Eros - according to the sense attributed before by Lysias- yearn for the beautiful thing. On the base from what we will be able to differentiate them? On the base of two governing principles that Plato affirms that they exist in us.

The first it is an innate desire of pleasure and the second a capacity of judgment developed tending to the optimal. Happens that sometimes such principles coincide and other times differ, in a permanent struggle by the supremacy.

When the judgment prevails, there is in us self-control, moderation; when, desire prevails drags us to the excess (hybris) and we acted against our judgment. However, in relation to the pleasure that provides the beautiful bodies, for Socrates the excess is Eros. Such Eros is, according to the philosopher, a wild physical passion, something brutal and in opposition to the reason. This form of love is bad for the soul of the loved one, because the lover paying attention only to his own pleasure harms the soul of the loved one when maintaining the love one in a state of dependency, of inferiority and when preventing the beloved, in addition, to leave in ignorance.

This is an Eros which seeks pleasure rather than the good, which is not only bad for the soul of the beloved but also for the body to the extent that the lover, owned by the selfish Eros, makes the beloved a physically weak person when forcing him to live locked up at home, thereby depriving of giving health to the body.

All this makes immensely more reasonable than the loved one favors to not be owned by the Eros, otherwise is exposed to an affection that is like the one of the wolf by the ewe. So is the accusation of Socrates against the Eros.

Nevertheless, such Eros is not the true one. Still more, Socrates considers that he has blasphemed against the God of love and must pay with a retraction - denominated pillioned in the Greek world, because must not have given the name of Eros to a erotic madness, totally corporal, possessive and absurdly egoistic.

Of what this palinode consists? That is the platonic myth of the trip of the soul will shed light not only on the true nature of the Eros, but also on the eternal soul and ideas, indispensable principles to understand the nature of Love.

According to Socrates teaching love is fundamentally a kind of madness -mania-that comes from the Gods, is worth to say, divine. It is a mania because is an irrational emotion, although only reaches its more high expression when is united to the clarity of the reason, for example, in the philosophical love of the truth and the beauty. Still more, the Eros is the psychological origin of the search of the philosopher, since the departure point of the movement and the main source of the action reside in the soul.

Plato represents here mystically the soul like Auriga that directs a winged car, formed by two horses, one docile one and the other obstinate one. When the death happens, the soul rises until the edge of the firmament and contemplates the eternal ideas that are above. Nevertheless, the overcrowding of the souls makes lose its wings rushing back to Earth. This soul that has seen the ideas with maximum clarity turns into philosopher or lover of the beauty, in an inspired being, but not with the inspiration of the artist - that is in a lower level, but with the inspiration of the cultured man, a wise in the art of the life.

From the platonic perspective, when in life we caught visually the shining splendor of the beauty, we recalled the Idea of the Beauty that we saw with the eyes of soul in the celestial world; nevertheless, we cannot make the same perception of the wisdom nor of other worthy realities of our love. Only the beauty is refulgent insofar as it is caught by the view that, according to Plato, is acute of our senses and by this same one it is loved by all.

However, that one that is not just initiated or has been corrupted, cannot go from the sensible beauty to the intelligible one. Hes glance is cached by that one imperfect form of beauty, giving himself to the pleasure. But the just initiated that has contemplated widely the things of the superior world, when seeing a divine face, a lovely imitation of the Beauty or a body of beautiful aspect tries to venerate it like a God.

After this he have wings again in all the territory of the soul, returning to that previous state in which he owned wings in his totality. Then, the soul finds rest in the contemplation of the loved one, gathering the sweet pleasure of that moment of union.

The initiate no longer will want to separate from the beloved because for him this one is the more precious treasure, a wonder that makes forget everything until the point to be willing in become a slave to be next to the love one. And this it is the state that the men call love, Plato says to us.

Next, Socrates describes in another aspect the effect of Eros on the soul , doing use again to the parabola of the soul like coachman and both horses. It happens now that the black horse jumps obstinately towards the loved one and does not obey to the orders of the coachman, jumping towards the loved one. Nevertheless, in the end it is tamed. Then, the soul of the lover, can approach the loved one surely and this one can be let venerate by a sincere lover, to who, finally accepts giving friendship to him.

Passed the time the things change, Plato states: “And once is received this treatment, the benevolence of the lover, that now sees close by, full of admiration to the loved one who understands that, even all the other together, friends and relatives, offer a small part of the friendship that finds in this friend posses by a God.

And when time passes in this deal and intimacy, over the contacts in gyms and other places of meeting, the source of that power when Zeus loved Ganymede called 'wave of desire', running in abundance towards the enamored one in part down to him and, in part, when is completely full, overflowing out, and as the breath or the echo of the objects that smooth and resistant jump back to the point where they departed, and the flow of beauty, passing through the eye turns back to the beautiful, and when, on that road, which is the road that leads naturally to the soul, has come to it and has filled, revive the holes in the feathers, giving impetus to birth of these and full of love the soul of the beloved.

“He is, then, enamored, but he does not understand of what; and nor knows what it happens to him nor he can explain it, but, he cannot allege any reason, as in a mirror, seen himself in his lover; whenever that one is present,both stop the suffering, and when is absent, in the same way they misses each other, having therefore a against-love that is the image of the love. He called it not love, but friendship, and desires, in a similar way, but more weakly, seeing, touching, to kiss to the other and sleep with.

And, certainly, is very probable that in these conditions, when they are laid down together, the undisciplined horse of the lover has something to say to charioteer and considers that, in exchange for his many difficulties, has taking little benefit; and on the other hand, the loved one does not have anything to say, but swollen of desire and not understanding the own situation, embraces the lover and kisses that person, demonstrating affection like to someone who really love, and whenever they are laid down is not able of refusing favors to the lover; their companion and charioteer resists to this with their reason and modesty.

Then, if is a ordinate life and the philosophy leads them to the victory of the best thing inside the soul, they pass this life in the happiness and the harmony, since, thanks to the dominion of themselves and moderation, they have put under which produced their virtue. And thus, when they have arrived at the aim of theirs lives, sustains by wings and light, of the three athletic fights of this truly Olympic joust, they have won in first, and neither the human wisdom nor divine madness can grant greater to the man.

If on the contrary, they take one more a cruder life, without love to the philosophy, but to the honors of this world, it is easy that in the intoxication or any other moment of negligence the undisciplined horses of both, taking to the souls off guard and liaising themselves for the same aim, they decide on the side which offers more happiness for the common people.

Once completed, they return in the future to the same, but rarely, because when they act like these they do not have the approval of all their mind. Friends, without a doubt, also are these, but less than those; they live the one for the other, as much while the love lasts as when they have left it, considering that has occurred mutually and received the one of the other the majors guarantees, to that is not allowed to lack once becoming enemies. And finally without wings, but without not to have made an effort to acquire them, they leave their bodies.

Consequently, the prize that they obtain from this loving madness is not small; because is not to the darkness nor to the underground where the law orders those who have begun the infra celestial trip, but taking a shining life, they travel happy in mutual company, and arrived the moment, they get to have wings by virtue of their love. So great and so divine the gifts that the friendship of enamoring will offer. However, the treatment of one who does not love, treatment mixed of mortal prudence and that is given to a mortal economy, producing in the friend soul a ruin that the masses praise like a merit, will make it roll nine thousand years around the Earth and underneath the Earth, in an irrational state.

“Socrates has tried here to explain the true nature of Eros that in this text begins and finishes with the loving relation between individuals. The Eros, really, maintains the eternal ideas and awakes by the vision of the masculine beauty, having as objective lead the beloved until the intellection of beauty and truth.

In synthesis, as much in the Phaedrus as in the Banquet - with different developments- we found the three same types of lovers. The lowest corresponds to those who are owned by the physical and merely egoistic passion. A little higher is the moderate lover who not being a true philosopher end up pleasing his sexual impulse, eventhough rationally. And is because his self control is defective. Is in truth, an intermediate state and that is positive if prepares for the philosophical life.

In the top of this scale of lovers is the authentic philosopher, who is beyond all servitude to the sexual. Here the lovers belong to the same sex and their goal is not other than the reciprocal inspiration in the investigation of the truth and the good. And although this love has a foundation in the sexual instinct, the lovers have had the force and the wisdom to sublimate it in a passion by the common study. This one is, also, the true meaning of the “platonic love” that so very imprecise is spoken.

From the point of view of the spiritual evolution the wisdom of Plato about the love has unquestionable merits, they are at sight. Nevertheless, his wisdom also suffers from too important errors like not considering them in this synthesis. For example, his concept of love clearly is founded on an homosexual attraction, although this has like extenuating that the platonic love is in essence a mental union. We remember, in addition, to the philosopher the highest manifestations of the love and affection they occur only between men. With this Plato simply expressed the normal feeling of his contemporaries, for those the woman was a mere physical being, without psychic qualities that made her worthy of the love of the man. By this Plato's Greece , the marriage could not be more than a union oriented to the satisfaction of the physical needs and to the procreation of the children.

Plato, in truth, does not go beyond the culture of his time when not giving any place to love, to the friendship, the companionship between men and women. Really, Plato saw in the love an irrational force and to that extent a value that is below the sphere of the reason. He did not know, therefore, this philosopher, the true Love that is beyond the irrational and of the rational
.

Second Dialogue of the Platonic Love



SECOND DIALOGUE OF THE PLATONIC LOVE

For Plato any tendency to the creation is the search of the immortality of the created thing.
VICTOR MANUEL GUZMAN VILLENA

The Banquet is the most important dialogue of Plato around the concept of love. Their scenes develop exactly in a banquet that at Agathon's house to celebrate the success of one of its tragedies. The diners have agreed to dedicate their meeting to make speeches to the God Eros, which would never have received a consistent praise from the part of poets and sophists. The text is transformed thus into a series of speeches base on the love that go from most superficial at the most deep, standing out the final speech of Socrates that gives the thought to us of Plato on the matter.

The first speech is the one of Fedra that indicates that Eros, the God of love, is the oldest divinity. Eros, according to him, causes that the men feel shame and ambition, in addition, his influence on men is major that any other feeling, since his power impels to great actions, like when the lover dies by love. In his presence the lovers necessarily abstain from all vileness and cowardice. In sum, Eros is a inspiring force of high actions.

The second speech corresponds to Pausanias, that distinguishes between two types of Eros, each one follows a different Aphrodite: Aphrodite Pandas and Celestial Aphrodite. The Eros of Aphrodite Pandas, is the one of those men who love the corporal thing and whom they look to achieve his aims without being interested in the process. The Eros of Celestial Aphrodite is own of men who look for the moral perfection. Who is under the influence of this Eros, looks for a permanent relation for the physical education and the philosophy as well as to educate to his loved in the wisdom and courage. This distinction between the two Eros shows that this speech is delivered with a deeper discernment and with an awareness higher than the first speech

The third speech is of the Eriximaco a doctor who -accepting the distinction of Pausanias- he maintains that not only the men own a double Eros, but all the things. Based on the medicine, Eriximaco indicates that the bodies own this double Eros or desire and that is right to allow to the good desires that are identified with the denominated celestial love. According to Eriximaco is work of the medical professional to know which are these good desires.

Also, for providing a better order of things-from the human and the divine until the seasons and climates-we must stimulate the desires that lead us to piety and justice. Wherever there is harmony and rhythm can be talking about the presence of love. Such is-roughly-the interpretation that Eriximaco makes about Eros. In it the meaning of Eros is extended by identifying with a universal force of nature. Certainly the Eriximaco speech is deeper than the previous ones, although has some small degree of professional arrogance

The following speech develops a fantastic anthropological conception and it belongs to Aristophanes. This it says to us that, primitively, three types of human beings existed, who had their organs duplicates. Some were males, others females, and finally were androgynous ones. These primitive beings have conspired against the gods, and since Zeus could not destroy the human race, since this one were the one that adored of the gods, he divided in two the primitive beings in punishment for their conspiracy. Since then human beings look for their other half. Each half of a primitive man and woman is given to homosexuality in search of their other half, while, half of the androgynous is given to heterosexuality in search of their other half.


Aristophanes in his speech describes Eros as an enthusiastic desire for something by which add it is eagerness to our nature and complements it. Certainly Aristophanes here confuses love with sexual instinct. He locates in a same level the homosexual love and the heterosexual love, which, from the point of view of the spiritual evolution is an error.
The next speech is of Agathon, that criticism to the others by not to have described, according to him, the true nature of the Eros. His speech uses beautiful words, but without much control of the meaning of them. For him Eros owns endless virtues such as the beauty, the tenderness, youth, the value, the moderation, the wisdom and justice. He adds, in addition, that Eros is the greatest of the poets, because he is the one who inspires the poetry. The Love would live in the souls of the men, being unrelated to any violence and shedding all the blessings.
In synthesis, we can say that Agathon thinks that the Eros always is occupied of the beauty and lives in the souls of the mankind, which, is not little to say. Socrates, in addition, will try to base what has been said by Agathon on the speech that follows.
The speech of the personage Socrates can be considered like the true thought of Plato about the nature of the love. Which is it fundamental affirmation? The fundamental affirmation is that the love is a form of necessity that has a goal and its relation with this goal is of desire, of exigency. The love always yearns for the beautiful thing and the good thing and, therefore, is not any of these but something intermediate between beautiful and the good thing. Either the love cannot be considered a God, because if it was a God would not love, since in a perfect being it is impossible to feel yearning, desire or passion. By the same, the Love is a being between immortal and mortal, that is to say, a spirit . And to be an intermediate being he is the one who completes and maintains connected all the things. Plato clarifies: “A God cannot mix with the mankind, but through Eros caries out all relation and dialogue of the Gods with the mankind, wide awake or in dreams.
More indeed Eros has by father Pores (Wealth) and by mother Penia (Poverty). Of the first he inherits his tendency to monopolize the good and the beautiful, his bravery, his attractiveness and power his cleverness, his yearning of wisdom. Of the second, her lack of goods, her rudest, her poverty. Thus, turned out that Eros is a philosopher, because he is not ignorant nor either wise. But not only this but also the beauty, because the real goal of the love is the beauty, which, according to Plato is not different from the good. This means that the love looks for the happiness, that is to say, the possession of the good, to which tends all the human sort. Also, Eros looks for the creation in the beauty, as much in the body as in the soul. Plato clarifies it to us: Why the creation love? To give birth to something is to be so lasting and immortal as a mortal can be. We agree, then, in which Eros has wish immortality with the good thing, if he wishes to own the good for always. Immortality is, then, the object of Eros.

For Plato any tendency to the creation is the search of the immortality of the created thing. Thus, those men who are fecund in the body are loving of the women and look for their immortality in their children. But those men who are fecund in the soul, yearn for to give to light wisdom and other more elevated forms. They are the poets and the inventors. A type of man still superior in wisdom will show this one in the administration of the state. In addition, will look and strives to lead it to his maximum perfection. Here there is more friendship than Eros, being a much more stable relation in the measurement that this union has its reason in a more beautiful and immortal fruit.

According to the Greek philosopher exits an ascending path to know the true love to get contemplation of the beautiful in itself. This is an erotic ascent that contemplates the following degrees;

1._The love to the corporal beauty that owns two moments: the love to a certain beautiful body and the love to the corporeal beauty generally.
2._The love to the beauty of the souls, that is to say, the moral beauty that is pronounced in the tasks and the rules of conduct of the men.
3._The love to the knowledge, which transcend the servitude of the concrete beings.
4._The love to the beautiful thing in itself, which are the supreme level of love and which all the beautiful things participate.
We have correctly walked the previous footpaths in all stages. This goal of the love is the same Idea of the beautiful thing in all their splendor. It eternal, is uncreated, imperishable, stable, because it is eternally identical to itself. In this Beauty in itself, in addition, all the beautiful things participate.

First Diologue of the Platonic Love


VICTOR MANUEL GUZMÁN VILLENA


The friendship or love had their origin in the necessity, is natural that the weak ones are friendly and lovers of the strong ones, the poor of the rich ones, the ignorant of the wise ones.

In Plato there are two terms that relate to the field of love. The first is "subsidiary" which means love in an ample sense, which includes the love of father and sons, friendship and even sexual love. The second word is "Eros" which means more precisely the sexual love.

The first attempt of definition of the love in platonic works is in the Lysis. In this text, in general terms the love is “to wish that the loved person as happy as possible”, says the Socrates personage taking with the young Lysis, to whom stimulates to reflect within the framework in his social situation of the limits of his house and Socrates continues its explanation indicating that the parents of the young person love him, therefore wish his happiness, nevertheless, they do not give an absolute freedom to him - who must obey the slave of the house and the teacher in the school -because he has not own sufficient knowledge of the things.

This means he is allowed to do anything which he has adequate knowledge. And so it follows that knowledge is the important thing, not the age.

Another consequence is that everyone will trust us if they realize that we own the knowledge of doing. People will appreciate us if we are useful. Socrates indicates, in the end, that if we want to be loved, we must acquire the wisdom, that does not have to be understood like a theoretical knowledge, but practitioner. The utilitarian point of view of Socrates is undeniable here. The dialogue continues with the search - at Socrates style- of the definition of the term "friend”.

But the word is ambiguous, because can be used to designate to the person who love and to designating the love one. In order to clarify this, Socrates asks: who is the friend, the one who loves or the one that is loved?
The interlocutor of Socrates responds that here there is no difference, nevertheless, is clear there is one, because the love is not always corresponded and it could happen that somebody loves someone who hates him/her. In any case, there is no clarity on the matter and, therefore, Socrates raises the things in another way.

It is analyzed next, the adage that says “the similar is friend of the similar”. According to this the good ones will be friendly of the good ones, and the bad ones of the bad ones. Nevertheless, if we accepted the platonic concept of which the badness means ignorance and discord, the bad ones can not even be friend with anybody, because they never maintain a similarity with anything, not even with themselves. That is to say, the saying is only valid for good or the harmonious ones.

But from this we reach an unexpected conclusion: someone good and completely self-sufficient does not need anyone's help to be this way. Also, if the friendship is based on need, a person absolutely good could not feel it. Either, the friendship between two completely good persons would not have sense, because they do not need anybody.

From another perspective, if it is accepted that the friendship or the love has their origin in the necessity, is natural that the weak ones are friendly and love the strong ones, the poor ones to the rich ones, the ignorant ones to the wise people, etc. Thus, we see that the love occurs here between opposites; but this point of view, if we look at this well leads us to some absurd: because in this case they will be friends goods and bad ones, brave and cowards, fair with unfair ones, chaste and lustful.

Thus we get a third perspective that what is neither good nor bad will be the friend or lover of the good or what is beautiful in this context are identical. More explicitly, that which is neither good nor bad, loves what is good, because evil is latent in this being. For example, the body loves health because of the presence of the disease. Also, the lover of wisdom loves it, because is absolutely not wise nor so ignorant as to not realize their own ignorance. With this concludes in the Lysis the search, strictly speaking, a concept.

With this it concludes in the Lysis the search, in strict sense, of a concept of the love, that evidently, in this dialogue is not obtained, and which we hoped in the next one the love prevails.