The Trojan War sung by Homer in the Iliad illustrates a major reversal in the process of spiritual quest. This reversal marks the end of the quest for the divine in the spirit when the seeker finally agrees to purify the depths of the vital.
Achilles and Ajax playing game
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. In particular, the pages that deal with major lineages involved in the war must be studied beforehand.
The method to navigate in the site is given in the Home tab.
The main characters appear in the following family trees :
Achilles and Ajax: Family tree 25
Agamemnon and Menelaus: Family tree 15
Priam, Paris and Hector: Family tree 16
Helen: Family tree 13
Diomedes: Family tree 9
Odysseus (Ulysses) and Patroclus: Family tree 14
THE SEEKER’S REALISATIONS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE WAR
Break the moulds of the past, but keep safe its gains and its spirit, or else thou hast no future’. Sri Aurobindo, Aphorism 238
The legend of the Trojan War, handed down to us in detail in the Iliad, describes the challenge of carrying out a reversal between ancient forms of yoga – which do not consider the possibility of man being rendered divine, but aim to bring humankind forward solely through an individual liberation into the paradise of the spirit – and newer forms of yoga which reject this stance and aspire to an evolution of humankind as a whole, moving towards a divinised humanity through an integral transformation of human nature. This war illustrates the rejection of a sole personal accomplishment, represented by the Trojan coalition, and a quest for a higher truth incarnated by Helen, who was married to Menelaus, a hero of the Achaean coalition. While this illustrates an inner battle, it also probably expresses an opposition between different currents of Greek spirituality of that period.
It is probably useful to remember that the action is carried out in the tenth and last year of the Trojan War.
According to the masters of wisdom of ancient Greece, this reversal would occur when under the pressure of his aspiration the seeker seeks to rise to the plane of the intuitive mind.
In fact, the royal dynasty of Troy belongs to the plane of the illumined mind within the genealogical line of descent of the Pleiad Electra (Diagram 16). But as heroes placed within the genealogical lineage of Tantalus, ‘aspiration’ (diagram 15), the plane towards which Agamemnon and Menelaus tend is the next plane of the intuitive mind, or intuition, for these two kings were respectively wed to Clytaemnestra, ‘a wisdom of great renown’, and Helen, ‘an evolution towards greater freedom’. Both sisters belong to the genealogical lineage of Taygete, which represents the intuitive mind (diagram 13). It must however be noted that the corresponding yoga represented by Agamemnon and Menelaus has been established on a foundation of the higher mind, for Hippodamia, ‘vital mastery’, is their grandmother, her own mother or grandmother being Sterope, ‘the higher mind’.
The Trojan War is therefore representative of an inner battle with the aim of discerning the best path for reaching a greater freedom brought by the intuitive mind, that of the pursuit of yoga in the process of separation of spirit and matter (the Trojans), or that of aspiration allied to the purification of the depths (the Achaean coalition supported by Achilles’ Myrmidons).
It would therefore seem that the lack of consecration which has led to the separation of spirit and matter occurs when the seeker truly establishes himself within the illumined mind with a simultaneous lack of ‘surrender’ illustrated by Laomedon’s perjuries.
The first was to refuse to give the gods Apollo and Poseidon the agreed upon compensation for their aid in building the Trojan citadel. This is to say that the seeker has not yet accomplished the second stage of yoga as described in the Bhagavad Gita; even if he has renounced the results of action, he has not yet entirely dissociated himself from the conviction of being himself the author of these actions.
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