This page of the site presents the domains of consciousness that constitute the underlying frame of Greek myths.
To fully understand this web page, it is recommended to follow the progression given in the tab Greek myths interpretation. This progression follows the spiritual journey.
The method to navigate in the site is given in the Home tab.
Eros (as the symbol of Bliss or Ananda) – Musée du Louvre
« As there is a category of facts to which our senses are our best available but very imperfect guides, as there is a category of truths which we seek by the keen but still imperfect light of our reason, so according to the mystic, there is a category of more subtle truths which surpass the reach both of the senses and the reason but can be ascertained by an inner direct knowledge and direct experience. These truths are supersensuous, but not the less real for that : they have immense results upon the consciousness changing its substance and movement, bringing especially deep peace and abiding joy, a great light of vision and knowledge, a possibility of the overcoming of the lower animal nature, vistas of a spiritual self-development which without them do not exist. A new outlook on things arises which brings with it, if fully pursued into its consequences, a great liberation, inner harmony, unification – many other possibilities besides. These things have been experienced, it is true, by a small minority of the human race, but still there has been a host of independent witnesses to them in all times, climes and conditions and numbered among them are some of the greatest intelligences of the past, some of the world’s most remarkable figures. Must these possibilities be immediately condemned as chimeras because they are not only beyond the average man in the street but also not easily seizable even by many cultivated intellects or because their method is more difficult than that of the ordinary sense or reason? If there is any truth in them, is not this possibility opened by them worth pursuing as disclosing a highest range of self-discovery and world discovery by the human soul? At its best, taken as true, it must be that – at its lowest taken as only a possibility, as all things attained by man have been only a possibility in their earlier stages, it is a great and may well be a most fruitful adventure. »
Sri Aurobindo
Letters on Yoga, 7-1-1934, XXII.188
“When we have passed beyond knowings,
Then we shall have Knowledge.
Reason was the helper; Reason is the bar.
When we have passed beyond willings,
Then we shall have Power.
Effort was the helper; Effort is the bar.
When we have passed beyond enjoyings,
Then we shall have Bliss.
Desire was the helper; Desire is the bar.
When we have passed beyond individualising,
Then we shall be real Persons.
Ego was the helper; Ego is the bar.
When we have passed beyond humanity,
Then we shall be the Man.
The Animal was the helper; the Animal is the bar.
Transform reason into ordered intuition;
Let all thyself be light. This is thy goal.
Transform effort into an easy and sovereign overflowing of the soul-strength;
Let all thyself be conscious force. This is thy goal.
Transform enjoying into an even and objectless ecstasy;
Let all thyself be bliss. This is thy goal.
Transform the divided individual into the world-personality;
Let all thyself be the divine. This is thy goal.
Transform the Animal into the Driver of the herds;
Let all thyself be the Krishna. This is thy goal.”
Sri Aurobindo
(Thoughts & Glimpses Cent. Edition: Vol. 16, pp 377)
We have presented several decryption keys for Greek mythology in the first volume of this study. They enabled us to uncover its general structure, to get closer to its hidden meaning, and to discover that it represented an extraordinary panorama of human evolution and described the paths to the future which the initiates of ancient Greece, and probably those of prior civilisations, had begun to explore.
Two of these paths are of particular importance: the ascension of the planes of consciousness in the lineage of Iapetus and the path of purification-liberation in Oceanos’.
At the beginning of this second volume, if one wants to explore the deeper meaning of this mythology, one will have to deepen the structure of the consciousness on which it relies and try to gain an overall view of the ways of approaching the Absolute, as well as the different types of experiences and realisations.
It is the only way for one to understand the adventures that preceded the War of Troy as well as the stakes disclosed in the long fight between the Acheans and the Trojan coalitions.
Even though all human experiences eventually recount a similar approach to the Truth, they do vary immensely according to the individ