I'm Jacob Kyle, and this is chitheads to Hellenism is a holistic worldview which
has as its goal the awakening, or how the entrance would say, the
youdneumonia of the human being, which is the realization of ourselves shun. The
One manifests in all, and all is one. From that on arises consciousness,
and from that consciousness arises soul. And from soul all that continuation of
the One appears as matter. And therefore there is no duality between consciousness matter
Essex doesn't mean morality. Ethics really means habits of energy, zality Korea,
ritual korea, shati shat shainty. Where are the wisdom traditions of the Western
world? What lineages that historically originated in European thought have something like a practice
of yoga that we find in the traditions of India and South Asia. One
argument as to why so many so called Western people flee to the so called
Eastern spiritual paths is because of the loss of our wisdom traditions. As Western
cultures, esoteric wisdom has been supplanted by fundamentalist organized religions. Faith in a
particular religious dogma has been privileged over the spiritual experience. As the great American
philosopher of the late nineteenth century, William James argued in his fascinating book The
Varieties of Religious Experience, we misunderstand the role of spiritual experience when we conflate
it with organized religion. This isn't to say that no spiritual experience can happen
within the context of organized religions, but rather that the popular structures of religion
operating today have hardened into dogmas and belief systems that have largely abandoned their technologies
of contemplative practice. These technologies cultivate the nervous system in such a way that
spiritual experience becomes possible. But for example, instead of having an embodied experience
of the compassionate love that Christ symbolizes, Christians are told all they have to
do is believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior to be saved from
eternal damnation. The yoga traditions, by contrast, have preserved an emphasis on
embodied experience and harbor sophisticated mystical vocabularies that give voice to the subtle varieties of
yogic experience. Yoga philosophy itself is unique in preserving a role for what is
called yogi pratyaksha, a form of perception that one finds represented in both Hindu
and Buddhist philosophical traditions, that is a kind of perception only possible through yogic
meditative practice. It is unique in that this perception challenges and dissolves an understanding
of reality that is filtered through dichotomies of subject and object, self and other,
or microcosm and macrocosm. As I interpret Athena's ideas in this episode of
Chittheads, the Western tradition has its own tradition of something like yoga, in
so far as some ancient Greek philosophy was connected to a Hellenic worldview that perceived
reality as unitary. More than this, there were technologies employed by some ancient
Greek philosophers and their schools that were designed to cultivate an experience of that oneness.
In other words, the ancient Greek philosophy that has been passed down to
us through Western intellectual history is one that has been largely stripped of its notions
of spiritual practice and experience. Athena's work is unique, then, in trying
to give voice to these forgotten elements of ancient Greek thought, and in doing
so, she lays a foundation for remembering and reconnecting to esoteric spiritual traditions that
are indigenous to the Western world. A part of Athena's story that I very
much relate to is her experience of how connecting to the yoga traditions of India
actually nourished a kind of experience and spiritual knowledge that allowed her to return to
her own indigenous philosophical heritage with a clarified vision. By experiencing something like Yogi
Pratiyaksha in her own adventure of practice, Athena was better able to recognize the
deep wisdom already abiding in her own culture's traditions. I had an experience very
much like this recently when I was living in Oxford and I attended an Anglican
church after many years of avoiding Christian churches altogether. As I've said previously on
the podcast, I grew up in a Christian church and in a Christian cultural
environment. However, today I identify as a practitioner of the Shaivashakta Darshana,
which means that I both engage the practices of this tradition as well as seek
to understand reality according to its nondual ontology. Shivashactism, or what is often
called nondual tntra, is a tradition that sees everything as divine. According to
this view, every object, every experience, and every mode of perception is
equally pregnant with the possibility of being perceived through a lens of divine consciousness.
If we accept this as true, that everything is divine, then it logically
follows that every religious context is also capable of being experienced from that perspective of
wisdom, beyond the dogmas and the doctrines that might otherwise be being taught by
some preacher in a pulpit. In this Anglican church, which was a part
of my college at Oxford, and which I visited on a number of occasions
while I was studying there, I suddenly was able to experience the service as
a kind of portal of ritual beauty. I perceived it as a channel that
I could attune to as one mode an expression among many, of accessing,
imbibing, and embodying that sacred substance of which we are all apart. Now
I'm not saying that I became a Christian again. What I'm saying is that,
like Athena, my own yogic Sodona allowed me to see the ritual structure
of this church with new eyes. To be a Christian is, in my
experience, to ascribe to a worldview that is presently alienated from spiritual experience by
teaching its followers that they are sinners who are ontologically cut off from the experience
of heaven until death, and at death, one had better believe the right
things in order to make it through those massive pearly gates. In so far
as heaven and hell vocabulary has any place in Shaivashakta Tantra, one could say
that heaven and Hell are both places on earth, and whether or not we
live in one realm or another during our lifetimes is contingent on the degree to
which we have cultivated and clarified our faculties of perception. We experience something like
what Christians call heaven when we have created the conditions for the possibility of seeing
and witnessing the divine reality as equally present in absolutely now. I've been told
by friends who identify with a much more nuanced, open minded compassionate or mystical
approach to Christianity, that my critiques of it are really more critiques of a
certain brand of fundamentalist Christianity, and that seems more or less correct. In
some sense. I am arguing with what could be called a straw man picture
of Christianity, one that is easily criticized, but which doesn't take the whole
tradition into view. So I do accept that there's more to say on the
subject. But because I and I know countless others have experienced the negative effects
of this brand of Christianity, I feel like it's safe to criticize it on
the basis of the harm that any fundamentalist religion does to the spiritual imagination of
its adherents. My attachment to the Shiveshaktra tradition is not based on a sense
that it is religiously correct, although I do think that its philosophy and what
I call its performative metaphysics provide a much more realistic picture of what the adventure
of meaning and fulfillment looks like. But really I follow this path not because
it is dogmatically better, but because I am hard attracted to it, just
like Athena is hard attracted to Hellenism. I am drawn to the beauty of
Shaivishakta Tantra and the elegance of its sophisticated traditions of thought. I am inspired
by the infinite unfolding of wisdom and meaning that it teaches. I am empowered
by its modes of self inquiry. And in so far as someone can extract
the same kind of meaningfulness and inspiration from Christianity or Islam or Judaism or some
modern brand of SBNR which is the acronym for spiritual but not religious, or
in Athena's case, Hellenism, then I think we're all on the right track.
But some questions that I've been reflecting on, is our understanding of a
spiritual tradition we ascribe to opening us up or closing us off from the vast
terrain of spiritual experiences. Are we hard into a kind of dogma, concerned
about having the right philosophy, or are we pursuing the horizon of meaningfulness that
ultimately fulfills every human being? To take another angle on this, has our
political ideology contracted into something that dehumanizes a segment or segments of the population.
Does our view of what is and is not scientific operate as a kind of
religious dogma that shuts us off from experimenting with other modes of seeing, perceiving,
or experiencing the world around us. Do our identities become straight jackets,
condemning us to deterministic views of human, psychological or social pathology, or are
they liberating lenses through which we expand our view of spiritual and contemplative potential.
The common denominator I think of all these questions is what I'll call the specter
of fundamentalism. Every system of thinking, whether it's religious, spiritual, medical,
or psychological, has the ability to harden into a kind of fundamentalism or
dogma, and fundamentalism is, in my view, a deadening pattern of thought.
It cuts us off from the wellspring of imagination, intuition, and creativity
that animates the subtle dimensions of our deepest being. It distorts and disenfranchises those
experienced exceptions to the rule that cannot be reconciled with the ideas that a fundamentalism
holds as sacrosanct. And ultimately, it delegitimizes the powerful moments of insight encountered
through spiritual experience and contemplative practices, and, as the late great composer Stephen
Sondheim wrote on the Lips of the Witch and into the Woods, these insights
give us more to see. We want to see more of reality clearly beyond
the obscurations of ignorance. So with these opening thoughts, I'll segue now into
my interview with Athena Potar. Sorry. Athena is a very good friend of
mine that I have known for nearly twenty years. She is a friend who
has continuously inspired my own spiritual journey ever since we were students in political theory
together at the London School of Economics. She and I have walked parallel paths,
straddling scholarly and spiritual pursuits in a shared commitment to contemplative insight. I
deeply respect Athena, and I hope you'll get as much out of this episode
as I received conducting it. I'll make a small disclaimer that this conversation was
actually recorded two years ago, and I lost the audio file that my voice
was recorded on, so I sound a little distant in the episode, although
I've tried to clean it up to make my voice a little louder. But
the real wisdom in this episode is of course coming from Athena, and you
can hear her very clearly. But I just wanted to offer my apologies for
this less than perfect audio experience before we begin. As you know, this
podcast is completely free and with changes at Embodied Philosophy recently, I'm trying to
dedicate more of my time to developing this podcast again after a few years of
it being somewhat less of a priority. It takes a lot of time and
dedication to produce every episode, a lot of time reading books and preparing for
the conversations that I have, and now this new element of writing some opening
thoughts. If you are a devoted Chitthead's listener or you feel inspired to support
this work in any way, we have a new donation site at buy me
a Coffee dot com forward slash chittheads. That's buy me a Coffee, just
like it sounds, buy me a Coffee dot com forward slash chittheads. You
can support the podcast with a donation as small as five dollars, which,
as the website implies, is about the cost of a coffee, although I
have the site set up to say that you're buying me a book, which
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and comment on a video if you have any thoughts. So, without any
further ado, let's get into today's interview with Athena Batari Asoma. Hello,
everyone, and welcome back to the Chidheads podcast. My guest today is a
very special guest, Athena Puttari She's very special because I've been friends with her
for how many years? Fourteen fourteen something like that, a long time.
We met in two thousand and six or seven, and we went to grad
school together at the London School of Economics, and I have to say Athena
was at the time and still to this day, was incredibly important person in
my own life as an evolving kind of intellectual and thinker. And we shared
a lot of the same passions for philosophy and have had many, many,
really fascinating, stimulating conversations over the years about the possibilities of philosophy, the
possibilities of integrating philosophy with embodiment, the esoteric, the mystical. So many
spiritual dimensions of understanding have we explored together, And so it has been a
long time plan to get her on the podcast and to talk to her about
her really fascinating work in this intersection, or rather a reimagining one might say,
of, or a reclaiming even of the Hellenic tradition. Hellenism is a
topic that we're going to talk extensively about today because Athena has a very interesting
and radical reappraisal, reclaiming, reimagining of the Hellenic tradition in a way that
sees it as a spiritual path, and I personally think that it's an incredible
asset to the wisdom community. Of course, there are many different types of
wisdom community, but if we can speak of a larger wisdom community, oftentimes
what is lost is really rigorous understandings of the way in which we have these
sots mystical traditions in the Western canon and especially in the ancient Greeks. So
I'm delighted to speak to Athena about that today. So Hello Athena, thank
you so much for joining me. Hello Jacob, thank you so much for
inviting me. So let's go back to the beginning. What do you do
you remember sort of that first kindling that set you on this path and of
opening up your mind first to philosophy, but now to the more kind of
esoteric mystical dimensions of understanding. My first philosophical questioning begun at a very very
young age. I remember I was four years old and I was pondering on
the concept of death actually, and I remember myself as a child having this
in it for disposition to philosophy, spending hours alone meditating thinking of course,
playing but also reading a lot of books. And then I think it was
sometime around the age of fourteen that I happened to meet Plato in one of
the textbooks at school. We were going through I think some ancient Greek grammar
or something like that of that sort at school, and I bumped onto Plato's
work and Plato as a philosopher and his ideas, and I felt completely fascinated.
I went up to my school teacher and said, I want to know
more. What is it about Plato. I want to read his ideas.
I want to read his books, and Flank got that teacher got me a
few Platonic dialogues and introduction to Platonic philosophy, and I really remember that day,
sitting in front of the fireplace actually in our living room. It was
winter, and I started reading about Plato's ideas, plato philosophy, Platonic philosophy,
and I literally lost touch with time space. I felt completely tapping into
a new kind of reality. I was literally like, I don't know if
it was a form of samadi or something, but seriously everything stopped and I
was this immersion into light. And then when I in a way came back
from that, I was, I was activated. I said, this is
why I'm born, this is why I'm here, this is what I do
for the rest of my life. So it so began. Yeah, so
speak a little bit about I mean, because as I mentioned, you know,
and I consider you a kind of soul sister, and that's always how
I speak about you to other people when I'm Yeah, it's about a really
important relationship in my life because whenever I'm with you, it's kind of like
it helps to rekindle and remember, you know, what we're here to do.
And I think we both share this desire to wake up. And that
desire to wake up has has been channeled in different ways and and for you
as well as for me, it has also had it has played you know,
different sort of games, and one of them has been academia. I
mean, you have a PhD from Oxford University, which it doesn't get more
you know, rigorous than that. So one of the reasons why I think,
you know, we connected so early as friends or in that initial environment
at the LC was was that we were we both shared this desire to wake
up, like we had this like leaning toward the mystical, even though we
didn't understand it to be that at the time, and you know, we
were yearning for a spiritual solution, right if we could go back to those
initial conversations about political theory, about the post structuralist philosophers who we were really
geeking out at the time, And I think, don't you think that part
of that was because you know, especially in the writing, like you were
really into dere Da, I was into like but Do and all these French
thinkers, that there was this kind of literary poetry that was almost mystical about
it, and so it satiated this kind of desire that we had for something
deeper that we weren't necessarily finding in kind of the other some of the classes
that we were that we were taking kind of in political theory at the time.
So what do you think about that? What do you think about the
way in which academia has appealed to you and to me, it's appealed to
that desire for some sort of truth or mystical attainment or spiritual knowledge. After
reading Plato, I was quite set on the idea that I'm joining university to
achieve union with higher ideas and an awakening and basically unity, realizing the unity
of all being. And actually, sometimes I go back to my vacation so
university, and I was actually writing that in the personal statements, that personal
statements were quite mystical somehow. Yes, because reading Plato and reading the Hellenic
tradition to philosophy at an early age, I thought that, hey, philosophy
is about what the ancients say. It's about, which is awakening, which
is realizing yourself at a higher level of humanity, achieving spiritual freedom, virtue,
a holistic view of life. And I thought that that's exactly how they
would be taught at modern universities as they were taught in ancient academies. And
apparently I was wrong. So going to university encountered a very different reality.
And I mean meeting you later at the master's level, when we're studying at
the LC. It was a point that I had already felt quite fed up
with the way knowledge was approached at universities at the undergraduate level, and I
was hoping that focusing more on political philosophy political theory at the master's would start
feeding that deep need ad to realize deeper dimensions of our spirit as human beings.
Nowadays, at universities. It happens at a lot of universities that this
richness of spirit of the human being is not closely examined, it's not fulfilled,
and a lot of approaches to philosophy have become about this armchair argumentation,
polemics, analysis of concepts, and of the history of ideas, rather than
engaging the personal transformation of the spirit of the actual, lived and embodied aspects
of philosophy that can satisfy it. As we're discussing the other day, the
deepest need of our human nature, which is to realize deep and lasting happiness
and freedom. That is what we all seek, deep happiness. In older
times, education we deliver precisely that teleologists. We say in philosophy that goal
and that that natural striving that we have as human beings, which is this
wholeness. And nowadays at the university is this not the goal happiness? It's
not really what we're being taught. So what do you think we are being
taught? Like if we could boil it down to a simple set of axioms,
that kind of the current state of education is generally geared toward. What
do you what do you think that kind of teleology is if it's not kind
of happiness or fulfillment in some way, what is it? Sharp mind,
but at the level of the argumentative mind, not at the level of the
wisdom mind. A sharp argumentative mind shaped in a way that can fulfill a
job or a social function. So we're I mean, where we studied,
great part of the education was becoming useful as we would be placed in a
particular employment in society. It wasn't about realizing our tur nature, finding freedom,
or finding happiness. But Plato defines and the entire Helen conradition and so
many other civilizations and wisdom traditions define the goal of education precisely as those things
that we all human beings seek. And when I met you, we were
clearly very thirsty for at the time, we really, we really wanted to
tap into that mystery of being that we felt was there, and we couldn't
find a way in. So even you know we're taught, we're here talking
about primarily Hellenism. I want to get to kind of the specifics in a
moment. But you haven't just been kind of informed and transformed by the tradition.
You also have been having entered various teachers of you know, you know
other contemplative traditions from India and South Asia, and one of them I know
that. You know, we were talking the other day when we were island
topping in these beautiful islands in Greece. Is you were talking about how you
found the Autobiography of Yogi, and I thought it would be I didn't plan
to talk about this, but I figured it would be kind of a nice
moment to talk about that experience for you and what it meant for you,
because we are sort of just after this centennial of the one hundred year anniversary
of that text. So what was you know, you speak about that as
quite a transformative moment, the encounter with that text. So can you say
a little bit about what that text gave you? Absolutely? So, we
had finished our master's degrees at the LC. At the time, I had
intered abate in the Parliament and I was introduced to Plato's Republick during our master's
degree. I did my disertation on that and after reading Yes, Plato's Republic,
I felt, I felt that it was a very big opening in my
soul. Also, I was reading the text from the original language from Mention
Greek, which is quite a potent language. It's a performative language. So
already things have been had been shifting inside of me, and I was feeling
that through contact with this very fundamental text of Hellenic philosophy, which is an
annunciation. Really, it's it's annuciation into into spirit, into and too many
ideas that are that can be very liberating for consciousness. There had been this,
yeah, this this fertile space opening up inside of me. And then
at that time I was I finished my time in London, and whatever I
was doing there, i'd apply to Oxford. I don't really member if I
had yet been accepted or not, but anyhow, so I turned back to
Greece and I go do my pilmgrage in the Greek islands, because it can
be really and in reaching experience being exposed to the sun, to the natural
elements. For me, it was my retreat time. And so as I
was going to tell the story, yeah yeah, So I'm traveling to these
islands and I just stop on a big island to take the boat to hop
on to a smaller and more isolated island, and I go to the local
bookshop, which actually quite beautiful just by the sea. I had about half
an hour to go find some books for my summer readings, and so I
go there. I'm around about twenty three, twenty four years old, and
I just go and hover over the section of classics and Ancient Hellenic readers,
and so I'm just reading there. I'm just hovering. I'm trying to pick
what I'm going to take for my summer readings. And this this young man
comes over and he looks at me. He's like, what are you doing
there? And I said, I'm just trying to pick my summer reading.
And he said, what ancient Greek texts? In ancient Greek fingers and philosophers?
I said yeah, and I said, a young girl reading ancient writers.
And I just my husband opened like an owl's and a turnal line,
and I said, what's the problem with young female? A young woman reading
ancient texts? And so we start this conversation and he stops me. And
by the way, he wasn't working there, he was also visiting, and
he says, Okay, wait a moment, I'll be right back, and
he goes over to some other shelves, come back and he brings me this
huge book. It was a very old and traditional edition and said you have
to buy this book. And I said, what is it. He said,
he's the autobiography with Yogi. I had no idea what this was,
but just the idea of a biography didn't ring about like I was a biography,
like I don't read biographies. And I was like, thank you very
much, but you know I don't read biographies. I don't think I'm going
to take it. He said, no, no, no, it's not
what you imagine it to be. It's not like a classical biography. You
have to take it. So we're back and forth for like five ten minutes,
and I'm about to lose a boat and he was like, no,
you must take it. And I was like, look, it's also very
heavy, it's very expensive. I cannot take it. And he just looks
at me in the eyes. It wasn't even him in that moment, and
he says, you're not going to make the boat unless you buy it.
I'm just going to block the entrance. You're not leaving this bookshop if you
don't buy this book. And I was like, okay, I have to
surrender into this certaintypity, and so I bought the book, got to the
island, started reading it, and after two days of reading it, I
felt that my entire life had been flipped upside down. I read this text
and I felt, oh my god, this is exactly what I was looking
for, reading Dry, reading Fuco, and reading all those you know,
postmodern thinkers. It's this is what I was looking for, not just to
reconstruct the old, but to find a spiritual path that is a live that
is concrete, that is structured, and that it is being taught in the
present moment. And I literally like left my friends, left everything that I
had planned to do in those islands, and I just went to can isolated
beach and I basically practiced meditation, and ever since that moment, my life
turned into a kind of asceticism. And you were starting your PhD or your
defail at Oxford at the time, which you did in political theory, and
you brought that text with you and also your meditation practice, so you were
integrating contemplative practice into a really intellectual time. And I imagine that must have
just really nourished everything that you were doing and also probably grounded and saved you,
because doing a defil can be quite difficult, right, Like, what
was that I mean, one of the things I've always admired about you is
your ability to kind of see the magic in all places that you spend your
time. I mean, obviously you have a real heart and soul connection to
Greece for obvious reasons. And then you also had this, you know,
when I was considering going to Oxford, you had this real, almost mystical
perception of that place. What was it that you Do you think that what
you saw and experience there was a result of the deep practice that you were
doing at the time, or do you think this is something in the something
that there's something special about the kind of field in Oxford? Was that informed
that perspective? Well, in my experience, Oxford is a very special place.
It has a very healing energy and a very very unique ambience. Partly
that is owned to the fact that so many people go there and spend so
much intellectual energy. So once you tap into that field of Oxford, you
tap into this kind of network of ideas and an etheric level. But apart
from that, Oxford, throughout the centers of its development, has also been
the home to many forms of mysticism. In older times, still, there
was a union between esoteric arts and education or academia. So Oxford has been
the home to many sorts of theology, spiritualities, and even nowadays is a
place. Oxfordshire is a place where a lot of astroums, a lot of
spiritual communities are hosted. There is a Debtan Ashroum, Brahmakmay's Astroam, there
is a Hindu astrom there. It is a place that for some reason it's
conducive to healing and spiritual development. And going there, as I had found
that entry into spirit through Yogananda and the Indian tradition, I found myself living
a life of a scholar and aesthetic at the same time. So my life
was divided between meditating and reading, going to the library, doing intellectual work,
and of course the combination of those two was particularly healing and transformative.
I actually went to India uh one year after I read the book, which
was also very incredible experience. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about
Hellenism now, because you know, this is of course really a fundamental feature
of your work now, and it really is. It's so unique and important
what you're doing, and I'm continually fascinated by it because you know, we
First of all, like I said at the beginning, I see you as
kind of, you know, reclaiming something that has been sort of forgotten.
Right, But there's also this sort of innovation and imaginative reconstruction happening, but
in a synergy of a relationship with platonic text texts from the Greek, ancient
Greek tradition that is imbued with a kind of lens of spirit. Right,
You're reading the text from a spiritual perspective and from your you know, from
your perspective that has always been there, but we've in some sense lost it.
So I want to start talking about this, but I guess maybe the
first question would be what is Hellenism? Okay, So I think sometimes the
word or the term Hellenism is conflated with the Hellenistic period, which is a
period basically after Alexander the Great, so going to the last centuries BC.
So Hellenism does not really refer to that. It refers to a worldview.
I would define Hellenism as a way of viewing, experiencing, and living in
the world which is guided and enlightened by certain fundamental principles. And those principles
are that Heraclita said, articulated in a way, the one manifesting all and
all is one. From that oneness arises consciousness, and from that consciousness arises
soul, and from soul all that continuation of the One appears as matter.
And therefore there is no duality between consciousness and matter, but really a continuum
that once you realize the essence of that continuum and relationship, you realize that
there is a holistic synergy between matter, appearances and the laws that govern those
appearances, and spirit spiritual laws and the principles that govern that layer and level
of reality. Along with that comes the understanding of what a human being is,
which I know that may sound a bit you know, too well known
or too conventional, but it's definitely the idea. For example, Patholgoras had
that we are divinity itself, we're divine manifestations. We're divine souls that will
call psychees really see heat. Having a human experience, which is something like
a dream. It is something like we're dreaming this experience, and once we
wake up, says he Eclittus, we realize that our log was the consciousness
through which we were perceiving even our material experience and our personhood is one and
common and the same, and that's what we really are. We are this
consciousness, wisdom, We are this unitary essence having a human experience and not
the other way around. And therefore, finally that translates into a certain way
of being in the world as an embodied human being manifests into ethical principles,
not in the sense of morality. With ethics doesn't mean morality. Ethics really
means habits of energy. Energetic habits or habits of consciousness is what ethics means.
Comes from the word ethos ethos, which really means habit, habit in
the way the energy. I could do the etymology as a point if you
want in the way the energy of the of your being or of your soul
moves, and so virtue to live, to be, to live a virtues
life, something which is so central to even the Greek literature, Greek philosophy
and generally authors of of of that tradition. Doesn't mean to abide by a
certain set of rules of morality. Peto actually did defines it as easy lownness
of soul. So when your energy, your subtle bodies right, we would
say, can move in such a way that you feel, no obscuration,
no obstacle, You're in the flow state. This is what virtue is a
non virtue. Again, if we take the original etymology of the term,
it means anything that obstructs the free flow of your being, of your soul,
beat, a mental state, a desire, a psychological emotional state.
Whatever obstructs is free flow. And therefore the liberty, the liberation of the
energy of our soul is non virtues. Okay, So the ethical part that's
very important tradition can be explained just in terms of energy, slow movement and
that. And I think that's the final point that then culminates into what we
the political life, because politics is very important for Hellenism. That's what we
study right in our political philosophy classes. And what is so interesting about tradition
is that it's an integral power part of spirituality. There is no Hellenic spirituality,
be it in Pythagoras, in Clayton, in Neoplatonists. That doesn't include
the political dimension. Why because being is inherently political. Why because it manifests
in polar in many, the one is infernently political because it appears as polar
as many polar being the term of one of the terms or of politics,
and there for the way that we relate to one another, the way we
create the community of humanity and human beings is an inherent aspect of the expression
of the one being into this mystery that we call life. That's so beautiful.
I love that. So you really kind of have expressed like the heart
of kind of the Hellenic worldview in this really beautiful way. What is you
know, and your speak you've already speaked spoken a little bit to it.
But I'm curious about how this worldview shapes a new or informs a new understanding
of education, right, because this is something also that we're very you and
I are similarly passionate about about new pedagogies, new sort of structures of education,
new ways of reimagining the educational process, you know, to enrich and
expand upon, you know, the existing educational structures that we already have in
the world. So what does this new Hellenic worldview, or rather this reimagined
or reclaimed Hellenic worldview say is necessary to like a more holistic or or or
whole educational process. So I'll just begin from the use of the term reclaiming,
reimagining Hellenism is a holistic worldview which has as its goal the awakening or
how the insinance would say, the you demonia of the human being, which
is the realization of ourselves, the realization of our nature is to find you
demonia. You demonia is not happiness exactly because it has the word F,
which is kind of the tao or the good as one of its main components.
And then dumonia comes from demon, which has nothing to do with the
modern use of the term. It literally means spirit. So it's the realization
of ourselves as the spirit of oneness or the spirit of the ultimate good,
or in other traditions you would call it tao. I don't know how you
would call it in in Hinduistic philosophy, I think they have something similar like
atman right or something like that. Yeah, the Shiva nature exactly, the
divine pure nature, as I say in Buddhism, that's what the term F
means. So the goal of philosophy, which is the same as the goal
of or the end towards which our humanity is moving, is self realization,
as is deep wholeness that can only manifest from coming in contact with the divine
pure nature. That we are, and so Helenism is essentially a wisdom,
or we can say anachronistically, a spiritual tradition. Now, what happened to
that tradition was that because of how old it was, because of all the
different social political factors and events that happen, all the changes and shifts that
happen in the enesty in the world, the catastrophe is the wars, and
so forth. The lineage, yes, I can't say broken in yes,
it's been broken, and yet not broken, because what can break the continuation
of spirit, right, nothing, But on a manifest level, the lineage
had been lost. I don't know if you'd like to include that. But
historically speaking, there was a particular law that passed during the sixth century AD
where Hellenism, philosophy, mathematics, the teaching of education, and the practice
of pagan religion were all prohibited by law, the penalty being death. So
the neo Platonic school, actually the Platonic school, the Platonic lineage, which
began from Pythagoras, was active all the way from sixth century BC to sixth
century AD, and with this decree from the bison and emperor at the time,
Christian emperor at the time being issued the philosophers, with the last scholar
of the Platonic School being Damascus, had to flee to Egypt and hide because
if they dared to continue practice dialectics, philosophy, mathematics and basically all that
the Platonic curriculum included, they would be sentenced to death. And from then
onwards we lose the traces of what happened to the lineage didn't continue, of
course it did in all sorts of forms. Then we have the alchemical schools,
we have the lodges, you know, but it had to go underground,
it had to hide, leading us to nowadays where the direct lineage continuation
has been lost. Yet the spirit of Hellenism and that tradition can never be
lost, like any true and authentic lineage. What's been happening in the past
a few centuries was that in griefs there have been teachers reviving, rekindling that
flame of the Hellenic view and the Hellenic practices. Because philosophy is not about
understanding or reading or writing or argumenting. It's about practicing also with body,
with soul, with everyday life, with meditation, so that you can ripen
into that wisdom, opening, that awakening which transcends intellect in the mind.
Philosophy is not an intellectual endeavor. The very word means love and wisdom or
love philotis philo for wisdom. Okay, So where is the mind in that?
Let me tell you nowhere only the initial steps. Even Socrates talks about
this plotimeists as we were reading. You have to let go of the mind
after a certain point. You train the mind enough through philosophy and the different
layers of initiation into philosophy, so they can be ready to let go into
that which transcends it, into that which contains it. And so in the
past couple of centuries, more and more teachers would appear in local forums that
would revive that deeper esoteric mystical which I don't even like to call it that
way. It's not, it's not really mystical, it's not even deeper.
It's the original meaning of what philosophy is according to the definitions of its representatives.
And so here were today, fast forward twenty twenty two AD, having
more and more interesting local groups in Greece about walking the path through our original
or can I say indigenous it's indigenous, our indigenous path. So my experience
has been that going to the East, going to India and practicing with meditations
from the East cleansed enough mine, enough obscurations, let's say, enough karma,
Okay, enough subtle body, so that when I went back to read
Plato, I read Plato with new eyes, and I realized that everything I
was reading in Hindu text in Buddhist texts in the tow it was right there
in front of me in my own original tradition, the one that had spurred
the love for truth in the first place, when I was just a young
child. And so what happened with this activation from the East was that it
cleared the mind and the energy in the soul space. For me, that
was my personal experience to be ready to realize that everything I need is already
in the text and basically devote my life to teaching philosophy that way, practicing
helen philosophy that way, and then also finding all those little hidden practices that
the engines have put into the text, and then of course not only reviving
them, not only reactivating them as they are, but of course reimagining them.
Because a lot is missing, a lot has been lost in the burning
of old libraries and so forth, so finding new ways of bringing those ancient
practices and that engine spirit into the present to fit the modern person, and
not just the modern Greek person, the consciousness as it is in this particular
moment in eternity that we call time. One of the things I said earlier
regarding how important I think this work is relates to again, like you said,
this reclaiming, this connection, reconnection, remembering of one's own kind of
indigenous wisdom. And even though you know, non Greek European, you know,
even though other people in Europe and in the kind of what we call
the Western world don't you know, speak Greek, or this isn't exactly our
indigenous heritage, there's still right, there's been this ongoing historical narrative that connects
Assault to ancient Greek that is sort of the you know, for better or
worse, you know, there are arguments that it's that it's problematic in various
ways, but for better or worse, we've all been connected historically to ancient
Greece, and so there does seem, even for people who were not born
in Greece, a really exciting aliveness to connecting us to a sense of our
own or the origins of Western culture, origins of European culture, that that
you know is alive with this kind of I like that you say. It's
not just mystical, it's just it's sort of the truth. And and but
you know, you remarked earlier about how ancient Greek is, that there's something
missing in translation. You and I have been talking. Obviously, I've been
here for what ten days now, and we have been talking. You know,
you often speak, you extract wisdom from a kind of etymological, beautiful
sort of etymological process. And you know, not all of us. I
don't speak ancient Greek, and I don't speak more modern Greek, and most
people who are listening to this podcasts probably don't. How important is it to
understand the language? And and if it's not important, perhaps we should at
least know a little bit about what is lost in translation, so to speak.
You already spoke a little bit about Greek being a performative language. What
is in these ancient languages? Uh, you know, in this instance Greek
that is sort of there's is necessary or is nourishing when you actually read the
philosophy itself. What's the what's the importance of language? I guess is the
question. So translation is already interpretation, as we're discussing. Can you translate
Beethoven? Can you translate music? Nope? Yeah, So there is a
sound, there is a music, and there is vibe, the vibrant vibe
exactly of language. How can you translate that? How can you translate let's
say, a Hindu mantra or a Buddhist mantra. It's not translatable, as
music is not translatable because the way it is vibrates in a particular manner that
invokes particular states at the level of energy, soul, unconsciousness. And afore,
that's why I was trying to tell you that. I mean, I
was making the point that so much is lost in translation, the vibratory potential,
love the way you put it, the performative aspect of that vibration is
lost. And hence why when we read texts in their original language, for
example, sounds crit is the same or in ancient Greek. Is not just
about the conceptual aspect. It's about the energetic transformation that occurs through coming in
contact with what is not seen behind the letters. What is that it's a
sound. It's the mathematics of the syntax, and it is the weaving of
the grammar. All that creates an effect that the level of brain, the
level of soul, at the level of energy that results into suttler or more
intense transformations in the Hellenic language. Socrates argues in the Curtilious the words the
letters themselves represent energetic movements of being. Their shape reflects those movements or those
potentialities of being or energy. Their sounds too. For example, the word
the letter are what we say, it has to do with the flow of
being. Right. He has a lot of such explanations. So then you
add the letters altogether, and you add on top of that algorithm of the
Hellenic language, which is absolutely it's brilliant, it's just divine. Then you
create a language that in itself codifies the normal delia. We say, so
kind of the nomos of being. The structure of being. Being is one
being unitary, but at the same time being is perfectly structured. And that's
where Pythagora so mathematics being the language of God himself. And he said,
God of alshaieometry, God is a mathematician because it's not just that being is
one and unitarian and transcendental. No, it's also perfectly organized a structure into
teleology, into laws, which in other traditions call karma. There is cause,
condition, and effect, and all that is governed by principles and algorithms.
And this is what I referred to by saying the structure of being that
is reflected in the language. So it's a practice that we do employ a
lot in modern Greece right now, in those little fora that have been created
that disseminate Hellenism as a path to awakening. But it's a practice that also
we find, for example in Proclues, Neoplatonic scholar who was the lineage holder
of Plato during the fourth century idea and an incredible thinker, an incredible mystic.
By the way, he was performing resurrections, according to historical texts,
his students saying that he had this white all around him. He was also
performing a lot of ritual. He was a lotto ritual, although he wouldn't
lose at all his rigor. He's like, he has written a completely rigorous
theology to comment upon Plato, and we find in his commentaries how often he
begins to explain something by analyzing the word and by codifying the word, opening
it up and showing how all the teachings around that concept have already been codified
into the semiology of the word, of the words used to define and approach
the concepts and the ideas. So that is a practice that we very much
use. I know sometimes it can sound a bit like watching My Big Fat
Wedding. We take our word and we say, this comes from Greek.
Let me have to explain what the word means. Yeah, I know,
but it's true. But it's true not that everything comes from Greece, from
Greek, but that we can we can tap into the wisdom of what is
signified through the signifier. Hence we say that in Greek there is no gap
between signified and signify. Those two our interview together in a dance of understanding.
Yeah, I mean, this is such a similar thing that we see
in Sanskritain Indian traditions, and and you know, it begs the question of
whether or not this really was an understanding that has kind of been lost sort
of that was that was alive for human beings in whatever kind of context they
were in at a certain period. And then at some point we lost and
we got stuck in this you know, no of representational language alone. But
we still we still understand it if we really start to think mystically or esoteretically
about music, right because we've we've kind of categorized or rather you know,
segregated music off as this thing called entertainment. It's there to entertain us,
but we all know the moving nature of music and how much it brings us
so easily to tears, like and if we just pause to reflect on that,
just for a moment, I think it's so easy to connect with how
transformative, how liberative, how profound music and sound is, and how central
it is to us as human beings and and you know, and you can
make such an easy link then to language and and and and and to the
an argument for the performative aspect of language. And that's just not happening,
right, It's not. It's something that is relatively you know, lost at
least in the mainstream of of contemporary culture. And we find it in little
you know, quadrants, like you know, the spiritual communities that we engage
in, perhaps when we chant mantras or you know, or you're engaging with
ancient Greek and the performative qualities of that. But there really is this opportunity,
I think, to open up that understanding and that wisdom again and and
I'm so grateful that you're working on it from from the Hellenic side. So
I want to talk a little bit about uh deities because in the Hellenic tradition,
right, and maybe I'm misunderstanding here about I think when we talk about
the Hellenic tradition, it also you know, there is talk of Zeus and
what is it correct to say that that's a part of the Hellenic world?
Is these this pantheon of deities like Zeus and a Diena your name is athena
aphro deity or you know, all of these things. So of course when
people talk about those gods today in kind of modern you know, popular culture,
it's sort of like, oh, well, that's a quite you know,
cute, provincial, you know, way of thinking about God's but work
totally past that, Like, you know, if anything, if we believe
in God at all, there's one God. And then this was sort of
this you know, ridiculous, sort of backward way of thinking about divinity.
So you know, what is missing in that understanding, like, how should
we from the kind of more esoteric, mystical hellenic perspective that you're that you're
talking about here, how do we understand the rule of these deities? What
are they? What's their purpose with their utility? That's a very good question.
So it can be answered in two ways. First of all, it's
said in the Tau when the Tao is lost, religion appears right. When
religion is lost, I think something like essex appears so and by religion,
I think they would mean in the Tao context also spirituality. So and William
James said that religion destroyed the religious experience exactly, so philosophers were not following
the religion the way we would think that the entire context of what we call
the Hellenic period was believing in the gods. Because always spirituality is not about
religion. Religion is organized spirituality that often ends up losing that connection with the
spirit. Hence then it becomes politicized, and you know, even wars can
be conducted in the name of religion. So, I mean, let's not
forget that Socrates was condemned to death by Athenians precisely because he was introducing new
spirits and new ideas that were appearing as blasphemous to the context of the time.
So philosophers were not approaching the deities in the way that let's say,
the social context of their times would. Now do we see philosophers engaging in
ideas about gods and deities talking about them, absolutely, but how do they
approach them as expressions of being, as expression of the oneness which we call
God, which is ultimately, as Plato says, and or the entire tradition
unnamed ariton. It's ineffable. It's like that which cannot be said. Yet
if we are to give it a name, we will call it the one
or God, and that God, or the Source or Being itself or the
source of being itself, whatever name we give it, right we can actually
describe it has different operations, different energies, different movements, and all those
are symbolized by the real pantheon of the Hellenic worldview, not just the twelve
gods we just we don't just have twelve gods. We have all those minor
duties and all those correlated This is really like a pantheon, and we're very
lucky to have some commentary saved both in the Platonic literature, but also in
the Neoplatonic literature, where authors decode those names and explain. For example,
let me give you an example. Right, Zeus is supposed to be the
creative mind. Hence he's like the leader of the gods. He has so
many wives and so many children. And in the representations he always appears to
be chasing after a woman, a goddess or immortal woman, to give birth
to more and more children. He's quite fertile. Right, But this is
what our minds are, right, This is what not the mind, what
consciousness in its creative operation does. It can mingle with with all sorts of
ideas, whether there are divine ideas or kind of more ordinary ideas, hence
goddesses or mortally women. Right, and and it gives birth just the worlds.
Everything that we experience here is a birth of consciousness. It's it's yet
another child of consciousness, and that is simpolized by Zeus. And at the
same time consciousness can destroy those projections. Hence Zeus has two names, Zeus
or Vias Dias, from which then the Latin those comes from which comes the
notion of god Dos. Also in some Hispanic languages they called god doos right,
So but those comes from dia or or deal two to divide, and
zeus means the unifier or that which is unifies it and and kind of returns
to the source. So there are these two movements of consciousness of creative consciousness.
Yeah, it's a very elaborate theology of consciousness symbolized through their presentations of
what we call daities. That was such an excellent explanation. So I want
to talk a little bit about the way in which Hellenic culture and understanding and
Greek philosophy has been appropriated by you know, modern understanding academia to a certain
degree. And and so can you talk a little bit about because you know,
when we're when I'm when I'm listening to you speak it. So it's
inspiring. People listening to this are going to be so refreshed to hear about
ancient Greek philosophy as a kind of living, a live tradition that also is
a is a potential path for people, whereas we've been taught that it's sort
of this dead relic archaeological artifact that's just merely a historical curiosity. But that's
a certain way in which it's been understood and appropriated for I mean, if
it's alive, it's only alive for philosophical purposes. And when I say philosophical,
I mean modern academic philosophy that has a very specific way of understanding what
the Greeks were doing. So can you talk a little bit about that and
what the explanation is for how that's occurred. It's quite understandable from a historical
perspective because in the newly arizing world at the time, Christianity arose as the
prevailing religion, and Christianity partly had to fight over dominance for dominance over the
ancient pagan tradition, which provided a very specific way, either through religion or
through Hellenic spirituality, for approaching what we call God divinity, the realization of
the human being. Therefore, Christianity had to claim its dominance at that time
had to eradicate all theological aspects of Hellenism that could not fit into feeding and
creating the theology of the Christian approach the Christian religion. Of course, we
know that the first debates of the Christian theologians are based on the Platonic Christian
theologists and the Arstotalian Christian theologians. They really took a lot of elements.
But then once those elements were appropriated, philosophy and the ancient sciences couldn't be
anymore valid in themselves or accepted themselves as alternative paths to approaching one or the
divine or illumination, because that we mean maintaining a polyphony, which at that
time was not allowed. Only the Christian path had to be allowed. Over
the centuries that evolved into the emerging of modern universities, which in Europe were
still very much tied into the religious authorities and institutions of the time. Therefore,
that trend had to continue all the way into the formulation of modern universities
and academia, and those remnants of approach have reached our days into the form
that we keep from the ancients whatever fits the world view of Western materialism or
Western prevailing theology, mainly the Christian theology, and all the other elements that
speak about mystical experience, about direct union with the One. All the methods
that are ingrained in the philosophical path don't have a space, don't have a
space, have to be kept and I will not forget one time I was
actually at Oxford. I raised my hand after representation on Plato's mathematics and I
said, well, that was actually a beautiful presentation. And the the speaker
had talked about how Plato thought mathematics was a way of being uh initiated into
the divine and it's actually a theology. We have books on the theology of
the numbers. Just numbers themselves are our paths to self, to self realize.
And so I asked, well, that's beautiful. How can we apply
it? And I was severely attacked by colleagues saying we cannot apply this is
this is not applicable. We are not philosophers. We're not Plato. Plato
is a philosopher. We're we are the study. We're students of We are
studying the philosophers. We're not philosoph first. And that reminds me a bit
of the of of what else saw in Church, because in Greece the prevailing
religion is still Christianity. Obviously this idea that, of course you can you
can read about Christ, you cannot become one, when when in the Testiment
them Testament itself, we have Jesus words saying you will achieve what I achieved,
and even more. You're my brothers, you're my sisters and my brothers,
and you will achieve even more than I did. And so of course
then we tap into a different kind of of of of narrative and discourse of
why is it that although playto himself said well, walk the path, don't
talk, don't talk about the path, walk the path, and Jesus said
the same, why is it that nowadays we have this socialized or these these
these these politicized structures of approaching either Christianity or Hellenism that just talk about that
without giving us the means of realizing what Christ, if we believe in Christ,
had realized, or what the Inswest had realized. That's a different discussion,
but I just want to stay to the point that this is this I
think why sometimes people, we then academic stitutions, feel uncomfortable with a practice
or philosophy as a holistic path that involves the body, involves the psyche,
involves our everyday lives, involves our relationships, involves meditation, and above all
involves the the awakening of our spirit. I mean, I love what you're
saying, because of course it could be almost like a sales pitch for embodied
philosophy, because that was literally the origin of the term came from actually,
you know, partly our you know, conversations that we had, you know,
and explorations and understandings of philosophy as as you said before, the love
of wisdom and that you know, it's almost like it becomes almost redundant to
say embodied philosophy when you understand philosophy in the way that you're talking about it.
But because philosophy has become reduced to, as you said before, this
armchair theoretical practice that has all these historical origins that you just so kind of
fascinating, fascinatingly fascinating, unpacked for us, you know, the this you
know, this, it almost becomes like I said, it becomes it becomes
redundant because philosophy is already if we understand it in the way that you're talking
about it, embodied philosophy. So what you've been describing and and the the
origin of this forgetting if you will, is you know, you've been doing
work also with an organization. I don't know if you're going to speak about
this about the Galao Commission, which you know I and in body philosophy have
endorsed, and you know there's signatories on this on this document that you've created
with these other i'll call them scholar practitioners. Can you talk a little bit
about the galle Commission, what it's all about and how it connects a little
bit to what you're describing in terms of this appropriation of Hellenism in a way
that is materialistic alone. So the Galleic Commission started from what is called the
Scientific, Scientific and Medical Network, which was instituted thirty years ago basically as
a as a space, an oasis that we'd call it where mainly scientists from
the positivist sciences and medical practitioners could meet to discuss ideas about spirit and soul
holistic views that were not permitted either in their practices or in their scholarship at
the time and recently was a few years ago. The Galileo Commission was like
a branch growing out of that organization, which published a report called the galile
Report that basically that includes it's like a manifesto. It's a manifesto that argues
how there is enough evidence right now for a post materialistic science. So there
is evidence coming from the positive sciences showing how it's not a matter that's primary
in nature, but consciousness, and that consciousness is unitary and shared. And
despite the many that's why it's called Galileo Commission. Despite the many evidence the
research showing towards the possibility that the very found days of Western science and the
Western material materialist worldview are not valid, they have been overturned, a lot
of scientists still don't want to engage into even considering this evidence, very much
like the colleagues of Galileo at the time were resisting seeing through the telescope and
considering the evidence that I was there because of because of bias, because of
attachment to a dogma. Hence our uses report that the foundation of science is
dogmatic. It's not scientific, it's axiomatic. Right, of course, every
theory has axioms, and those axioms are not prooved, they're taken for granted,
and once they're overturned, we can either accept that and move to a
new theory, or if we are very much embedded in the in that theoretical
construct, we may resist the overturning of its axioms, because that would imply
the call transformation of our own selves. So then a lot of anthropological psychological
factors come into play. So this year we decided to publish also a report,
or we call it a call for our renaiscence of the spirit and the
humanities, making the case for what is problematic about the materialistic foundations and the
ideological foundations of modern academia, and what are the possibilities that open up once
we accept a consciousness only based model, or the primary of consciousness model for
not just the positive sciences, but for the humanities. And it was a
great it was a great joy to be the author of this of this call
and being able to explore those things that we have been talking about so many
years. And I think we followed very parallel, very paralil parallel paths.
You focused on how we can move to a more inclusive approach to philosophy through
amazing platform body philosophy. You know, I followed a different path, but
I think it's the same you rightly pointed out, it's the same request.
It's the same calling about how we can transform our educational systems in a way
that reflect the richness of our human spirit. That was so beautiful Athena.
Yeah, I mean I find the Galileo Commission to be a really incredible thing
that you've you know, that you've worked on and collaborated on. And as
you said, you wrote this the manifesto that is a really exciting read and
for anybody that wants to read the Galileo Commission or that you're not calling it
a manifesto now you're calling it something else. No, we won't call it
a manifesto because it's not. You know, we felt that the is very
problem. Yes, it's a call, it's an invitation. Yeah, it's
an invitation. Let's you know, let's see what's happening. Let's see why
societies are the way they are, universities are the way they are. Let's
see why humanity suffers from depression more than any other condition. Why is that?
Of course, the way we tune our minds through education has a great
role to play. And when we have to address those those problems, and
we have to address the resistance of academic structures to all those beautiful ideas we've
been discussing all the time. And it's a term that you know, we
were talking about the other day or just before, the term epistemological discrimination.
Yes, discrimination doesn't happen only on the basis of color, race, sex.
It can happen on the base of ideas. And sometimes I think we
have witnessed that at various academic extitutions, we're being discriminated just because our ideas
don't fit the main narrative. Well, well, where is the freedom of
thought, where's the freedom of spirit? In that? I think it's time
to really open up our minds and explores their ideas, those ideas that we're
discussing, you know, in our spiritual slash scholar practitioner work. Also on
an academic level, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean Galileo Commission is
so fascinating and I'm hoping to do more kind of interviews with people that have
been participating, and so at some point we'll have there's some great scholars and
scientists okay, perfect letter collaborating it. We'll create a little list and I'll
dive in and we'll have them on a future episode. So, Athena,
this has been so beautiful talking to you, and I'm sure we're going to
do it again because I don't have any plans to stop doing this podcast.
It's been going strong for six years and hopefully it'll God willing it will go
on for six more and then some so we'll have to have you back to
talk about more beautiful Hellenic wisdom. So it's been such a pleasure, but
I wanted to give you a chance as we close, to offer anyone who's
listening an opportunity or rather a doorway to find you. So how can people
find you and learn about more that you're doing. I know you teach mostly
right now in Greek, but there is, by the way, for those
listening, there is a plan in the works for Athena to do initially a
talk. We're also talking about her participating in doing a talk, and then
also a course in Hellenic wisdom, and there's more to come. So if
you're looking for something in English with Athena, we have some plans for that
on the way. But besides that, Athena, tell people how they can
find you online or anywhere else you want to share. You're going to get
this. You can pray, you can collect to connect with me, to
lepathically pathetly. So what do I say? Okay, Facebook, Facebook Athenai
and then also we will she will be releasing We've been talking actually at about
her website and it will be released. It's going to be a beautiful outpouring
of wisdom in and of itself, and it will be ready someday. And
so depending on when you're listening to this that that website may be found and
we will make sure to put it in the show notes to this episode when
it becomes available. So just check back and check for it when you can.
I can I say one last thing, of course, because you asked
before about how is this path valuable for us today? When I went to
India, I was blessed to meet some very special people beings, and one
of the messages, one of the advice I received was what are you doing
here? Why are you up in the Malayas? Why are you up in
Armsala? Everything you're looking for, it's where you started from. It wasn't
just a message of the mind. It was really I felt through my entire
body. It was for me a message of spirit, a message of heart.
And in time I realized something that then doesn't have only validity for me
or for Greeks, but for all people, and especially all Westerners that were
already nested in a spiritual tradition, which, like all spiritual traditions, has
a different flavor, and that flavor is close to the Western soul in the
sense that it employs the mind. It employs the intellect, doesn't leave it
out. It uses rigor. It taps into ideas of citizenship and politics and
love and relationship and friendship that they're so ingrained in our cultural outlook. If
we can speak of a unitary Western cultural outlook. And therefore, with all
my respect to all spiritual or wisdom traditions of the world, and I happen
to have teachers in a few of them, and I'm practicing a few of
them. Still, Nevertheless, I realized that I don't need to run to
India or run to anywhere else to tap into a spiritual dharma right as spiritual
ambience, that a spiritual treasury that can give me access to what I've always
been seeking. That we already have that, and that is our hellenic route.
I've been speaking with my dear, dear friend and soul sister, Athena
Potari Athena, It's been such a pleasure. Thank you, Thank you so
much. Jacob