CHRYSSA VELISSARIOU

CHRYSSA VELISSARIOU

PART ONE

Greco-Buddhism refers to the cultural syncretism between Hellenistic culture and Buddhism, which developed between the 4th century BCE and the 5th century CE in Bactria and the Indian subcontinent, corresponding to the territories of modern day Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan. It was a cultural consequence of a long chain of interactions begun by Greek forays into India from the time of Alexander the Great, carried further by the establishment of the Indo-Greek Kingdom and extended during the flourishing of the Hellenized Kushan Empire. Greco-Buddhism influenced the artistic, and perhaps the spiritual development of Buddhism, particularly Mahayana Buddhism. With the collapse of the hegemony of the Greco - Bactria in 125 BC, the mobilization of the Greeks of Bactria to India favored contacts with the established Buddhist communities and introduced new dimensions of commercial interdependence between Greek and non-Greek populations. When finally Greeks in the region lost their power, this did not affect the Hellenistic culture which continued to exert its influence in Asia for several centuries. For example, the construction of statues with refractory clay or putty and supporting timber frame (rods drivers for hands), was a great novelty of the Bactrian Greek artists who left the long imprint on Buddhist art. The legacy of Alexander finds expression in unusual Greek - Buddhist sculptures Gandaras that from the time of Kusan have all predominant Buddhist character. The form of the Buddha as the Apollo Belvedere, although "one among countless known forms, is without doubt the oldest, which served as a model for others "while nudity remarkable sculptures of Tzainists probably had as a model Apollonic archetypes. During the first centuries of the millennium, the Greek-Buddhist art Gandarini included Indian and Hellenistic elements. This is distinct to the statues of botisattvas (Buddhas in scene) that were decorated with royal jewels and amulets, the contrapposto standing with emphasis in the folds of the dresses and the abundance Dionysian themes. However, we should bear in our mind that the Greek-Buddhist art did not appear suddenly, but emerge as a byproduct of a continuous exchange of materials, language and cultural specificities between Indo-Greeks, Indians and Persians and the Greeks of Bactria They had attracted many to Buddhism, there would be among them a significant number of Buddhists among the Greeks donors and Hellenized intellectuals and artists.

Despite the distinct similarities, no case is the model for the others, while the novel character and stunning expression of Greco-Buddhist art obviously would not be possible without the contribution of two equally important traditions. The edited image Hellenistic themes in Buddhist art is not likely to be the result of impersonal leased Greek artists who should have been asked by their employers to insist more on issues Buddhist tradition. In the reliefs of Gandaras there is an orgy of decoration with light snapshots Dionysian competition which do not correspond to the renunciation of the early Buddhism of Sravaka (Sanskr. Śrāvaka, listeners or disciples of the Buddha). While the portrait of the historical Shakyamuni representing the birth of the side of his mother, a popular topic in Gandarini art seems to have visual adaptation to the birth of Dionysus from the buttock of Zeus.

We note that the interactions between cultures do not require strictly symmetrical processes between independent entities. The Hellenistic Buddhism is not a self-evident unity, but the side effect of a reconstruction of horizons, neither exclusively Indian, nor only Greek. The transmission of ideas and practices across historical periods and conceptual fields, introduced mutations between the source and target culture. Undoubtedly, innovations occur when the expressions of a tradition restructured organic according to the internal logic of another, an event that stimulated growth without requiring the assignment assumption foreign elements, nor the radical departure from the traditional representation models, but the review of perception the possibilities that emerge from a cultural environment that basically makes possible merger. Buddhism emerged from the cocoon of the Indian, after meeting with the cosmopolitan culture of the Greek Macedonians, who were open to foreign traditions and cults and thought, like Buddhists, death as a passage in a later life. And as Buddhists were constructing funerary monuments instead of godifying their churches and their leaders. There were many deities were of particular importance for Macedonians who found corresponding to worship the pantheon of Mahayana tradition of Buddhism. It is useful to study how the Hellenistic polytheism internationalism had contributed to the spread of globalization and the expression of the theology of Buddhist traditions in the north, forming a pantheon of Buddhas and Hellenized morphological botisattvas, who, like the Olympian gods and demigods, had their own mythical stories and sported distinct spiritual markers and natural features.

The economic interdependence, geographic proximity and socio - political factors determine as intrusive main reasons the shaping of Buddhism in Hellenistic Far East. Moreover, intercultural meetings between Indo - Greeks and Buddhists were the result of effortless and asymmetric ownership knowledge gave way to a new interpretation models in historical times. By "effortless" recognize that both communities had served in different opportunities and alternating density, an open demonstration of cultural superiority and applied resistance by specifying the different ways as barbarian or foreign (mleccha). However no evidence of religious conflicts and pressures that were motivated by the Indo - Greek and Buddhist missionaries. Instead discern cultural proselytism circumstances a voluntary association facilitated by trade. There is no reason to display the Roman influence as crucial in creating the Greco-Buddhist art, except that it had existed a sense of renewal and rejuvenation trends.

And finally, the kind of exchanges that occurred between Greeks and Buddhists were asymmetric in the sense that neither the cultural proselytism, nor the effects of the conscious or unconscious actions are distributed equally or equally in front of the law to the ideological and materialistic culture that prevailed. Moreover, the mundane reality of two or more people who share and borrow practices, ideas and customs, not what is disputed. Rather it is the result of a cross-cultural stratification function to our attention that affected the formation, transfer and expression of religious knowledge in different areas and seasons between East and West, West and East.

Several philosophers, such as Pyrrho, Anaxarchus and Onesicritus, are said to have been selected by Alexander to accompany him in his eastern campaigns. During the 18 months they were in India, they were able to interact with Indian ascetics, generally described as Gymnosophists ("naked philosophers"). Pyrrho (360-270 BCE) returned to Greece and became the first Skeptic and the founder of the school named Pyrrhonism. The Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius explained that Pyrrho's equanimity and detachment from the world were acquired in India. Few of his sayings are directly known, but they are clearly reminiscent of sramanic, possibly Buddhist, thought: "Nothing really exists, but human life is governed by convention... Nothing is in itself more this than that". The close association between Greeks and Buddhism probably led to exchanges on the philosophical plane as well. Many of the early Mahayana theories of reality and knowledge can be related to Greek philosophical schools of thought. Mahayana Buddhism has been described as the "form of Buddhism which (regardless of how Hinduized its later forms became) seems to have originated in the Greco-Buddhist communities of India, through a conflation of the Greek Democritean-Sophistic-Skeptical tradition with the rudimentary and unformalized empirical and skeptical elements already present in early Buddhism" (McEvilly, "The Shape of Ancient Thought", p503).

In the Prajnaparamita, the rejection of the reality of passing phenomena as "empty, false and fleeting" can also be found in Greek Pyrrhonism.

The perception of ultimate reality was, for the Cynics as well as for the Madhyamakas and Zen teachers after them, only accessible through a non-conceptual and non-verbal approach (Greek Phronesis), which alone allowed to get rid of ordinary conceptions.

The mental attitude of equanimity and dispassionate outlook in front of events was also characteristic of the Cynics and Stoics, who called it "Apatheia".

Nagarjuna's dialectic developed in the Madhyamaka can be paralleled to the Greek dialectical tradition.

CYNICISM, MADHYAMAKA AND ZEN

Numerous parallels exist between the Greek philosophy of the Cynics and, several centuries later, the Buddhist philosophy of the Madhyamika and Zen. The Cynics denied the relevancy of human conventions and opinions (described as typhos, literally "smoke" or "mist", a metaphor for "illusion" or "error"), including verbal expressions, in favor of the raw experience of reality. They stressed the independence from externals to achieve happiness ("Happiness is not pleasure, for which we need external, but virtue, which is complete without external" 3rd epistole of Crates). Similarly the Prajnaparamita, precursor of the Madhyamika, explained that all things are like foam, or bubbles, "empty, false, and fleeting", and that "only the negation of all views can lead to enlightenment" (Nāgārjuna, MK XIII.8). In order to evade the world of illusion, the Cynics recommended the discipline and struggle ("askēsis kai machē") of philosophy, the practice of "autarkia" (self-rule), and a lifestyle exemplified by Diogenes, which, like Buddhist monks, renounced earthly possessions. These conceptions, in combination with the idea of "philanthropia" (universal loving kindness, of which Crates, the student of Diogenes, was the best proponent), are strikingly reminiscent of Buddhist Prajna (wisdom) and Karuṇā (compassion).

Another of these philosophers, Onesicritus, a Cynic, is said by Strabo to have learnt in India the following precepts: "That nothing that happens to a man is bad or good, opinions being merely dreams. ... That the best philosophy [is] that which liberates the mind from [both] pleasure and grief")

Intense westward physical exchange at that time along the Silk Road is confirmed by the Roman craze for silk from the 1st century BCE to the point that the Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds. This is attested by at least three authors: Strabo (64/ 63 BCE–c. 24 CE), Seneca the Younger (c. 3 BCE–65 CE), Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE). The aforementioned Strabo and Plutarch (c. 45–125 CE) also wrote about Indo-Greek Buddhist king Menander, confirming that information about the Indo-Greek Buddhists was circulating throughout the Hellenistic world.

Another century later the Christian church father Clement of Alexandria (died 215AD) mentioned Buddha by name in his Stromata (Bk I, Ch XV): "The Indian gymnosophists are also in the number of the other barbarian philosophers. And of these there are two classes, some of them called Sarmanæ and others Brahmins. And those of the Sarmanæ who are called "Hylobii" neither inhabit cities, nor have roofs over them, but are clothed in the bark of trees, feed on nuts, and drink water in their hands. Like those called Encratites in the present day, they know not marriage nor begetting of children. Some, too, of the Indians obey the precepts of Buddha (Βούττα) whom, on account of his extraordinary sanctity, they have raised to divine honours."

Buddhist gravestones from the Ptolemaic period have also been found in Alexandria in Egypt, decorated with depictions of the Dharma wheel. The presence of Buddhists in Alexandria at this time is important, since "It was later in this very place that some of the most active centers of Christianity were established". The pre-Christian monastic order of the Therapeutae is possibly a deformation of the Pāli word "Theravāda," a form of Buddhism, and the movement may have "almost entirely drawn (its) inspiration from the teaching and practices of Buddhist asceticism". They may even have been descendants of Asoka's emissaries to the West. The philosopher Hegesias of Cyrene, from the city of Cyrene where Magas of Cyrene ruled, is sometimes thought to have been influenced by the teachings of Aśoka's Buddhist missionaries.

Zarmanochegas (Zarmarus) (Ζαρμανοχηγὰς) was a monk of the Sramana tradition (possibly, but not necessarily a Buddhist) who, according to ancient historians such as Strabo and Dio Cassius, met Nicholas of Damascus in Antioch while Augustus (died 14 CE) was ruling the Roman Emprire, and shortly thereafter proceeded to Athens where he burnt himself to death. His story and tomb in Athens were well-known over a century later. Plutarch (died 120 AD) in his Life of Alexander, after discussing the self-immolation of Calanus of India (Kalanos) witnessed by Alexander writes: "The same thing was done long after by another Indian who came with Caesar to Athens, where they still show you "the Indian's Monument," referring to Zarmanochegas' tomb in Roman Athens.

Although the philosophical systems of Buddhism and Christianity have evolved in rather different ways, the moral precepts advocated by Buddhism from the time of Ashoka through his edicts do have some similarities with the Christian moral precepts developed more than two centuries later: respect for life, respect for the weak, rejection of violence, pardon to sinners, tolerance.

One theory is that these similarities may indicate the propagation of Buddhist ideals into the Western World, with the Greeks acting as intermediaries and religious syncretists.

"Scholars have often considered the possibility that Buddhism influenced the early development of Christianity. They have drawn attention to many parallels concerning the births, lives, doctrines, and deaths of the Buddha and Jesus" (Bentley, "Old World Encounters").

The story of the birth of the Buddha was well known in the West, and possibly influenced the story of the birth of Jesus: Saint Jerome (4th century CE) mentions the birth of the Buddha, who he says "was born from the side of a virgin".

The similarity between Greek and Indian thought

The empirical world as a reflection of the true.

Proportions in the Platonic and Upanishad reflection.

The Indian thought, throughout the long history, characterized by the belief that behind streaming phenomena there is something imperishable and the Absolute, which for his knowledge and realization, the Indian esoteric tradition devoted to exclusive care. That something which Indians call Brahman, Supreme Spirit alone Reality, Unborn, eternal, self-existent, Unlimited, Unspecified are incomprehensible outside categories of cognition and not subject to any determination. Both the Vedas and the Upanishads deal with the rush of Brachman. All Indian spiritual teachers are enthusiastic students and disciples of the Upanishads. They are written in Sanskrit language and translation and the transmission of their meanings is difficult, especially for the Western world.

Sri Aurobindo states that university education is not enough, so it can lead to errors and alterations, criticizing Professor Max Muller, who tried to make a translation of "Oriental holy books", which in their study - says The Aurobindo - "man surpasses the level of thinking of the empirical world and ascends to the knowledge of the Absolute, the Eternal and unending." The Upanishads inspired every religion and philosophical system of the world. This is particularly the case with Greek philosophy as well as among them there are striking similarities, which cannot be accidental. There must be some relationship between the Upanishads with the Ionian sages, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Megasthenis, Herodotus and Plato. It seems that the above philosophers and other Greeks and Romans, had joined the Indian philosophy, the wisdom of the Vedas and Upanishads.

Special similarities exist in the books of Plato: Timaeus, State, Phaedrus, Phaedo, Theaititos, Parmenides etc. Both Plato and the Upanishads, discard the experience of the senses - that leads to the phenomenal world, the world of shadows as described in the State in the myth of the cave - with which man acquires only an impression (glory) while the other path, that of the mind leads to Knowledge (Science).

As in the Platonic texts, we have two kinds of knowledge: the lower where the experience leads to beleiving, and the higher where the uplifting of the mind leads to the "Knowledge", so in the Upanishads we are inferior to the phenomenal world, or paranidya, and superior to Brahman, or aparavidya. Plato, like the Upanishads, turns thinking and searching the world of experience to another imaginary world, "where the soul will look back and remember the immortal and eternal ideas."

Before men become aware of this reality, both in Plato and the Upanishads are like sleeping! In the project "Menon" Plato describes humans like "sleepwalker chasing ghosts" and the cation Upanishads, the Yama shouts to his student: "Awake, and take lighting." We find both Light as a symbol and as an image to denote sulfur, in Platonic texts and the Upanishads. In   State, the sun, the light of the experience world is likened to the "Good" or "Divine" the world of Ideas. The Upanishads use similarly light as symbol when referring to the Absolute Being, Brahman. In Tsantogia Upanishad we read:

"The Brahman is the sun of the universe." "The visible sun is the (apparent) form of Brahman"

AND SVETASVATARA UPANISHADS:

"Like the sun with flash illuminates all the space up, down and across, so adorable and one god, the guardian of all goodness and greatness, dominates any Cause."

This light, the Platonic word is a lamp to illuminate the inner "self" and become known beyond the narrow "I" (know thyself). This "Self" beyond the narrow ego is the reflection of society and of the ideas and the supreme Idea, the "Good" to which is related  and  from which the Enlightened One is attracted to the "memory" and the " love "(Menon, Alcibiades, Symposium). In the Upanishads the same search dominates.

The man to know the ultimate truth must  feel and experience Brahman -  "the light that illuminates all beings", the first substance that is beyond intellect - and to live the union with the Atman. Rejection of empirical knowledge turned to cognition is found almost invariant in the State. For Plato, the world of experience is the "shadow of reality." In the myth of the cave, people are shackled with their back to the light and know only the shadows projected as ghosts on the wall in front of them. But when they will be free and will look to the true light, "will be left dazzled by its great luster."

The Svetasvatara Upanishad speaks of maya, «spiritual blindness which has no real knowledge or vidya» (excerpt from "Plato and Upanishads," B. Vitsaxis). The Svetasvatara Upanishad tells us about maya, «the illusion" of the empirical world. In cation Upanishads speak of darkness into which man plunges the avidya (spiritual blindness or ignorance) and into which emerges as the ghost world of maya.

"As one can see that a dream and a magic is not real, or even a city in heaven,one can  see the entire universe is not true, the Upanishads, the Wise."

(Manduca Upanishads)

"One should know that Nature is illusion, maya»

(Svetasvatara Upanishads)

Most of us find it very difficult to maintain at all times an awareness of the limitations and relativity of the world experience. The models of reality that we create with our thoughts - because this is the easiest down a procedure - lead us to consider them as the only elements of reality and so complacent in their plausibility. One of the main objectives of the Upanishads is precisely the exemption from the above confusion and error. In cation Upanishad we read:

"Whoever heard what is not heard, will catch this which is not caught, whoever see what is not seen, whoever taste and smell what does not taste and smell, what has no beginning and end, what is the largest and the smallest yet, he will be freed from the chains of death "

The description of the Divine and Absolute (or Divine Wisdom and Science) with reason, or rather, the linguistic symbols, was recognized as something impossible from Plato, Timaeus and the Seventh Letter to Dion. Timaeus says:

"It's difficult to find the Creator and Father of the universe, and when yet figured out, it is impossible to speak about Him."

As a way of expressing the transcendent, both Plato and the Upanishads resort to the apophatic method. In trying to make a comparison, we chose two similar texts. In Parmenides, Plato argues:

"Neither any reason nor any name belongs to this. Why it is neither the whole nor parts. It is neither straightforward nor cyclical. It is neither within nor another thing to himself. It is neither in motion nor at rest. It is neither identical nor different. It is neither straight nor unequal with something else. It is neither in the past nor in the present nor in the future. "

This refusal (to something) does not necessarily mean the absence. The fact that something is neither so nor otherwise, nor this nor that, does not mean that something does not exist, but that it is something else, elusive and incomprehensible by the senses. This determination with reference to the Imperishable, the Absolute, Brahman,  in the Upanishads and is named in the Sanskrit dictum neti-neti, which means neither-nor. In Brchantaranyaka Upanishad we read:

"The indestructible is neither coarse nor fine, neither short nor long, neither glamorous (like fire) nor fluid (like water). Without shadow, without darkness, without air, without space, without resistance to the touch, without smell, without taste, without eyes, without ears, without voice, without wind, without energy, without breath, without mouth, without counting, without interior, without overseas. "

However, people want to talk about this supreme Truth and so the Indians, with their characteristic ability to wrap everything in a veil of myth, showed the Brachman like a divine entity. With special place in the sacred texts and Indian poems, place it in its deepest essence of all the gods and goddesses they worship it while they  point out and clarify that all gods and goddesses are nothing but His own reflection. In Brchantaranyaka Upanishad we read:

"People say: Believe in that God, believe in this Goddess and right. Because every god and every goddess were created by Brahman and Brahman is all the gods. "

The manifestation of Brahman at the level of the human soul is called Atman (or theosophical terminology, inner self). The myth of Indra and Virotsana referred to Chantogya Upanishads illuminates nicely the fact that we need proper and persistent quest to understand the nature of the inner self, the Atman. The inner self, the Atman, our Upanishads say, not to be confused with the body - that is only temporary residence - nor with the various levels of experience. This way one identifies with the body, the swing between pleasure and pain. When you get rid of the wrong of that identification, you no longer feel neither pleasure nor pain. When you get the true knowledge, the inner self realizes its nature as self-consciousness and bliss. In one Upanishad we read:

"The wise spirit is not born nor dies. He has not come from nowhere. Unborn, immutable, eternal, archetypal not killed when the body dies. "

In the Upanishads, the eminently "connoisseur" is the Atman, identical as the "Mind" in Plato, "which although hidden, is present as a God-given spark tying bow bright soul with the eternal." It is still remarkable for the parallelism that the myth of creation, in the Timaeus, "Mind in man" has the value of the "Mind the World Soul." As for the bright arc state on MOUNTAKI Upanishad we read: "The bow is the syllable OM, the arrow is the Atman, Brahman is the target." In Taitrigia Upanishads, the self consists of five layers (koshas) which follow one another from the outside inwards and the lower and more ylovari, to the upper and thinner. These different layers or sheaths closed as in a cage, not only inside ourselves but also in general polymorph hidden Brahman must be removed one to one so that the last inner layer to be nude "like rice by the successive peels '.

In the Republic, Plato says:

"The soul resembles Glaucus, the god of the sea that is glued onto the clams, seaweed and stones, so that no one finds it difficult to recognize it."

The Platonic conception of the soul, along with the doctrine that the purpose of philosophy and of true knowledge is the cleaning of the lower layers, its symbolic gravel and clams, the exemption of that from the physical desires, "so that it can Fly Free to the world of the true. "

The many similarities with the Upanishads, hitherto mentioned, make us think of Eusebius 315p.Ch. He speaks of a "tradition" which attributes the Aristoxenos, the well-known writer "on Harmonics" and student of Aristotle, according to which Indians Sages actually visited Athens and talked with Socrates. Reference to visit Indian Elders in Athens even contained a quote from Aristotle that was rescued from  Diogenes Laertius. The time did not distinguish between East and West.

COMPARISON OF WELFARE OF PLOTINUS WITH HINDU DHARMA

A typical example to demonstrate the existence of a common Indo-European base in India and Greco-Roman thought is comparing the Hindu Dharma by Provident theory of the philosopher Plotinus. The labeling of additional common sense and structural characteristics of the philosophy of the founder of the Neo-Platonic school of Indian philosophy, shows how direct the action to likeness with the divine through metaphysical thought and moral formation of people.

 Typical is the possibility that emerged from the surveys on the Indo-European theory to determine the existence of an ancient corpus doctrines and perceptions expressed by Neoplatonism while undetected in many societies and cultures of the ancient world. An important concept that comes from this "common culture" of antiquity is the Hindu Dharma, which corresponds to the concept of Providence, as elaborated philosophical and religious Plotinus in the 3rd century AD With Dharma and welfare emphasis on respect in a world order as an expression of a divine plan, defines the duties of man in the natural and social reality. These, like other concepts from the tradition of the school of Plotinus and Indian philosophy, concern metaphysics and cosmology, based on forms of a high morality. In the Indian philosophy this one even recognizes metaphysical differentiation of people, as shown by the cosmogony of the Vedas, especially the hymn Purusha souks.

 Usually, when referring to the Eastern influence in the work of Plotinus, is noted that the thought  falls clearly in the earlier Greek tradition, especially in the Aristotelian and Platonic thought.  However, many Western scholars with pioneering perhaps William Jones, argued that it was impossible to read the Vedanta and  not believe that Pythagoras and Plato raised high theories from the same source as the sages of India. German Indology of the 18th and 19th century were bodies and followers of the ancient culture of reality that had come to them.

It is so easy to recognize similarities of the aristocratic and classical quality thinking of the ancient Indians .

A position on the matter is that the Welfare of Plotinus refers to Hindu Dharma. The Indian term dharma cannot be translated simply as piety.  In Indian thought and Plotinus the world is not a product of coincidence. As the Welfare of Plotinus, so the Dharma connect the skilled and faithful to the divine order. Celestial bodies as deities and parts of the whole as a living organism of Plotinus, reminiscent of divine entities, which the first great Indian philosophical system to study the Dharma, the Pourva Mimamsa, assumes that they exist. The meaning of dharma has a superstitious importance, such as Providence and harmony of the whole of Plotinus concerning the magical thinking, as all parts of the world interact with each other, are based on the proportions (favorite of all). Although Plotinus did not lead to the introduction of rituals embedded in these proportions, his successors and heirs will do this step .

Many of the insights of Plotinus are similar to the thought of the Bhagavad Gita, which is part of the great epic Machamparata. The meaning of Dharma often appears in Bhagavad Gita to involve various roles, such as cousin, brother, father or mother. The dilemma of the hero Arjuna is that the battle must take into account both the Dharma of his family, and his own Dharma as a warrior. For Indian thought, if you escape from the laws of dharma world becomes chaotic, and those who break the Dharma of family and caste cause the forces of destruction.

The Dharma falling on each individual person and creature brings together a superior destiny and purpose. Similarly, Plotinus experiencing a personal experience he believed more than ever that it belonged to a higher destiny, wondering how his soul again found the body "itself." He used the last term, because he thought that the soul is like the gold in the mire, which never falls entirely from the world of the imaginary to the world of matter. Even in the Mahabharata is said that the true Dharma is hidden in a dark cave, that is in the heart. With the myth of the cave of (neo) Platonic considered mutatis mutandis that the truth is hidden from the observable universe. The Indian thought is not limited to action and Plotinus saw acting as a shadow theory. Direct contact with the incarnate-revealed wisdom is absent from the work of Plotinus, but there is in Christianity.

Still, the image of the tree in the inverted form of the root in heaven and its branches on earth describing Plotinus in his treatise "On Welfare" is similar to the Indian tradition. This picture for Plotinus symbolizes the concentration of everything in a module, which is the principle of the One. Plotinus aims to show the existence of a life of the whole that has the capacity to grow branches without losing the individual being within. The tree which was mentioned in the Indian religion was called eternal Asvatha and refers to the living universe as being an aspect of Brahman, while individual deities correspond to the branches. The experience of man immersed in this immense tree, the only possibility to drive in redemption and deified is to become the source of the whole. As Plotinus insisted on the universe of eternity which reflects the cosmic tree, thus in the Bhagavad Gita Asvatha was referred as indestructible, upturned, whose form is not broken down in the observable universe, neither the beginning, nor the end. Quite possibly the transfer of the cosmic tree is dictated by the frequent use of another transport such as sun rays.

END OF PART ONE.

[CHRYSSA VELISSARIOU]