Know,
O Brother mine, that where a truly spiritual love seeks
to consolidate itself doubly by a pure,
permanent union of the two, in its earthly
sense, it commits no sin, no
crime in the eyes of the great Ain-Soph, for it is
but the divine repetition of the Male and
Female Principles-the microcosmal reflection of the first condition of
Creation. On such a union angels may
well smile! But they are rare, Brother mine, and can only be created
under the wise and loving supervision
of the Lodge, in order that the sons and
daughters of clay might not be utterly degenerated, and
the Divine Love of the Inhabitants of Higher Spheres
(Angels) towards the daughters of Adam be repeated. But
even such must suffer, before they are rewarded.
Man's Atma may remain pure and as highly
spiritual while it is united with its material body;
why should not two souls in two bodies
remain as pure and uncontaminated
notwithstanding the earthly passing union of the
latter two.
It
sounds like an esoteric version of Platonic love, and so that will be the topic
of today’s post:
In the Phaedrus, Plato describes a three-level cosmos composed of a supreme reality, a
world of gods and a world of souls. The inferior levels look to the higher
levels for sustenance. The gods look to Reality, the souls look to the gods and
have a less direct view of reality. Redemption is ultimately based on judgement
and atonement according the merit of one’s actions and behaviour. Plato
considers that the philosophical life is the ideal path to redemption. He
introduces the role of beauty along with the notion of divine madness. The
beauty that one sees in the beloved creates an intense feeling of inspired
frenzy.
This divine madness of lovers is considered to be the fourth and greatest type
of madness. It provokes a recollection of the original vision of essential
truths of the soul in the heavens. He describes the original vision of divine
beauty as one of the brightest visions in the celestial world in lyrical,
mystical tones. He relates the process of recollection to the mother of the
muses. Beauty is described as being the most vividly manifested of essential
principles and is particularly striking because it appeals to our visual
sense, considered to be the brightest and sharpest of our senses. Plato
however observes that the sight of beauty is like a double-edged sword. If
experienced with modesty and restraint, it is a deeply uplifting experience.
Without those sanctifying virtues it can lead to a debased carnality and crude
sensuality. It is this moral challenge of beauty that the speech is essentially concerned with.[1]
The image of the charioteer and the two
horses, a noble one and an unruly one, are introduced corresponding to the
rational, spirited and sensual divisions of the soul in the Republic. In Freudian terms, the struggle to
control the unruly horse in the sight of beauty could be described as a process
of sublimating the energies of the libido (instincts and unconscious energies) through
a proper repression in order to develop a socially functional adult behaviour.[2]
According to Sanford: “The debate on
the Symposium concerning
the status of eros in its ‘‘educated’’ forms can be (and sometimes
explicitly is) presented precisely in relation to Freud’s concept
of sublimation. Is it that a specifically sexual concept of eros is
postulated as the driving force behind the higher sublimated aims of the
philosopher – that eros as sexual passion is responsible for all desire,
including the desire to philosophize, and that philosophy is thus a sexual-erotic discipline? (Sanford 53)
In summary, Plato uses the image of the
charioteer and the two horses at a cosmic level for ontological purposes.
The charioteer participating in the divine revolutions denotes the soul’s metaphysical
nature. The fall of the soul deals with the problem of the origins of human
incarnation and the origins of human
consciousness. It serves to evoke why human beings have
the capacity for reason and understanding,
distinguishing them from animals, despite having an animal nature. When the
soul suffers incarnation in a body, Plato pursues the charioteer image to
develop on the epistemological, psychological and ethical aspects of the human
condition.
Plato concludes the myth by discussing three
paths that a loving relationship can take: one lived in chaste purity and
virtue leads to salvation, regaining one’s wings; a life of virtue inspired by
love, but with occasional lapses into physical passion, leads to a slower,
partial redemption; a relationship characterized by seduction and calculation
is not conducive to salvation. The loss and re-growth of wings deals with the intellectual
faculties of the soul. The loss symbolizing forgetfulness and ignorance and the re-growth denoting progress in recollection
and knowledge.
[1] “These, in sum, are innocent frequenters of beauty, not to
be confused with the class to whom it becomes an occasion of fall into the ugly – for the aspiration towards a good
degenerates into an evil often” (Plotinus, III, 5, 1).
[2]We have defined the concept of ‘‘libido’’ as a quantitatively variable force which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation. We distinguish this libido in respect of its special origin from the energy which must be supposed to underlie mental processes in general, and we also thus attribute a qualitative character to it (Sanford 54); Socrates’ speech identifies (contra Halperin) a metaphysical desire for immortality shared by all animals,including the human. Even intellectual procreation in the more abstract forms of beauty is described in ecstatic terms. Eros, in all its manifestations, is neither somatic nor psychical, neither ‘‘sexual’’ nor ‘‘non-sexual,’’ but both"(Sanford 56).
[2]We have defined the concept of ‘‘libido’’ as a quantitatively variable force which could serve as a measure of processes and transformations occurring in the field of sexual excitation. We distinguish this libido in respect of its special origin from the energy which must be supposed to underlie mental processes in general, and we also thus attribute a qualitative character to it (Sanford 54); Socrates’ speech identifies (contra Halperin) a metaphysical desire for immortality shared by all animals,including the human. Even intellectual procreation in the more abstract forms of beauty is described in ecstatic terms. Eros, in all its manifestations, is neither somatic nor psychical, neither ‘‘sexual’’ nor ‘‘non-sexual,’’ but both"(Sanford 56).
Part 2
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