Know Yoursel and the “E” of Delfphi

 KNOW YOURSELF

The “E” of Delphi and Nothing in excess

In the midst of the turbulence of the last century and the present, in the midst of this accelerated time, even faster than our ability to understand and integrate so many changes in such a short life, it is necessary once again, as in all critical times, calm down and look again for the essential keys to continue on our path.

Just as it is relatively easy to meditate in the middle of the night and in silence, while it is difficult or even impossible in the noise of the street, on the subway or while driving a car, the human capacity for introversion has become enormously reduced in recent centuries.

In previous epochs, the environment that surrounded man was limited: colors, tastes, clothing, settings and landscapes, customs and festivals, life and work were well regulated, simple and durable, without many changes over time. It was relatively easy to abstract consciousness from this familiar and controlled environment. On the contrary, the upheaval and acceleration we are experiencing today make it increasingly difficult to assimilate and adapt to new advances in technology, culture and art. As soon as we begin to master a new field of knowledge, it becomes obsolete.

In the past, for a student in search of wisdom, the process of seeking and assimilating new knowledge sometimes required long journeys and even risking one's life. Finding a text, copying it carefully and commenting on it in the closest circle was in itself a way of learning and contrasting with the opinions of others.

When we are told, for example, that Tsong Kha Pa, the founder of the Gelugpa tradition in Tibet, had up to a hundred different teachers, or that Paracelsus traveled to faraway Tartary, or that Plato managed to accumulate a small fortune to travel to Egypt in search of knowledge. Today it is almost incredible for us to imagine ourselves in such circumstances, because despite the ease of transportation of our times, we lack that kind of perseverance and dedication in the search for deep knowledge that can take a lifetime.

It is not causal, then, that the birth of many religious movements began in solitude, in the desert or in the high mountains. There the soul tends to rise, free from distractions, propelled to higher spheres, free from the fatigue of daily life. Serenely at rest, in the midst of these "deserts of the senses", the soul tends to immerse itself in the profound mystery of individual existence.

The ancient advice of the Oracle of Delphi: "Know thyself," was the necessary end to a routine and mechanical life. In our time, however, the constant hustle and bustle, the constant impact of news, advertising and the many ways in which the senses are forcibly drawn outward, make it very difficult for our minds to find a moment of peace, without being bombarded by external impacts.

In reality, the Delphic Motto was only a part of a complete program, therefore to know ourselves was not the end but the beginning of a spiritual adventure. On the frontispiece of that temple, accompanying the famous phrase γνῶθι σεαυτόν, (Know thyself) there were two other indications of the next step to follow: It was not enough to know oneself, it was also necessary to harmonize ourselves, as indicated by the second motto engraved there: "μηδὲν ἄγαν", that is, "Nothing in excess." Therefore, it was necessary to perfect habits, perfect the human being by seeking the necessary balance between the different components, physical and psychological, to finally chart the course towards the goal indicated by the third Delphic sign: the letter Epsilon.

This was a symbol of the number five and of the human superior and celestial plane, as Plutarch tells us in his treatise "On the E of Delphi", that is, the fifth celestial or spiritual quintessence, above the 4 usual components of the human being: physical body, energy-vitality, psychic-emotional plane, and mind.

It was, therefore, an entire life program, which began with a deep introspection of oneself, continued with the practical work of polishing the edges of one's personality through moral practice, and finally culminated on the level of the intelligible wisdom.

The three Delphic mottos could also be expressed as three phases: Information, Integration and Transformation, i.e. the acquisition of the necessary self-knowledge, the concretization of this knowledge by working on the harmonization of the different factors at work in the human personality, and finally the access to the higher through a process of transformation.

Nowadays information dominates, it has never been so easy to acquire it, at our fingertips we can have any of the thousands of treatises and books of wisdom from the present and the past in a few seconds. Education itself is conceived as an accumulation of data, as if the human being were a modern computer.

Nobody today demands that certain knowledge become a reality in a human being, it is enough to memorize it and then to remember it, i.e.: to know how to access the mechanical memory stored in our brain.

But the real and necessary information is not that which comes from the changing and illusory world that surrounds us, but rather that which comes from introspection within ourselves, it is the result of the profound “Know thyself” of the Delphic mandate.

Thus, knowledge that comes to us from the outside often prevents the knowledge that comes to us from the most intimate and spiritual, and therefore hinders the moral integration of this knowledge and its logical consequence: the transformation of the human being.