What is Real Love – Plato on Love
According to Plato, humans are constituted of three planes: Soma (body), Psiche (soul) and Nous (divine consciousness or spirit). In all three dimensions, humans naturally search for completeness and eternity, because as divine creatures, people would have an innate wish to return to their original state – the state of union with God. Love is then, the force that moves human towards this original condition.
In the physical plane, beauty is one of the the most visible attributes of the divine. People have a natural tendency, according to Plato, to contemplate beauty and to search for beautiful bodies. Beautiful forms inspire humans to “spread the seeds” of eternity in order to give birth to another being, who will perpetuate a piece of those who brought him to life.
In a higher realm, or the psychological plane, humans also have a natural tendency to search for the divine and should feel impelled towards virtuous people in order to give birth to moral virtues and spread the seeds of eternity by building projects and reaching objectives that will leave a trace of their existence.
Finally, in the highest of the three dimensions, love appears as the sentiment that pushes everything back to unity.
So, real love as Plato defended, is when one finds another person whom he or she can manifest love in all three levels of existence and feel fulfilled in all three dimensions – physical, psychological and spiritual planes.
Why do People Suffer for Love?
From this perspective, it’s easy to identify the reasons behind unhappy relationships. People focus on the physical aspect of love, searching only for physical fulfillment and neglecting the psychological and spiritual dimensions. When two people can generate children in the physical realm but cannot produce virtues together, or have a sense of unity in a higher plane, then this is not true love – it’s simply satisfaction of the instincts, which is temporary and fades away.
Unfortunately, many people only become aware of psychological and spiritual dimensions of love when it’s too late and the two people have taken different directions. When this happens, the couple is united simply by the obligations of the physical existence, but they are not spiritually together.
Is Platonic Love Impossible?
Soul mates are two people who walk together towards the ideal world, they are physically, psychologically and spiritually together – they complete each other in each of the three levels of existence.
Unlike some people think, Platonic love does not mean sexless love. Rather, it means love that is not commanded by instincts, not governed by the wish to satisfy only the body, but a kind of love that also fulfills the spiritual needs and brings not only children, but also virtues to the world.
In today’s society, people are so used to love that is merely based on the physical existence, that this kind of love that transcends the boundaries of the material life is associated to “impossible love”. Maybe the modern society would have a lot to learn from the ancient world.
Sources:
Plato, The Symposium
(http://www.suite101.com/content/what-is-platonic-love–platos-philosophy-and-the-art-of-loving-a260700)
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“Romantic love is romantic because it’s based on an idea. The idea of the ideal person – someone who completes you, someone who you feel naturally matches your heartbeat and your very breath. Someone who is very different from you but complements you perfectly. Someone who makes you feel entirely like a woman – if you’re a woman, and someone who makes you feel like you’re a true man if you’re a man.
You want your completor, the rest of your identity, that person who feels like your own heart and soul to you. But you cannot know these things unless you have formed that ideal in your mind and have pursued it. Then s/he walks in the room – you just know, you just know because you can’t go wrong.”
Sources:
(http://hubpages.com/hub/Can-you-fall-in-love-with-someone-you-have-never-met_1)
