Peter Kingsley's View of Parmenides and Savitri

Hi, I just got a very interesting book called "Reality" from this scholar/philosopher/writer (very famous in the small circle of scholars and experts on ancient greek texts and ancient greek philosophy). So this book is about how parmenides' (the presocratic philosopher) poem has been misinterpreted. Kingsley wrote this book... I guess for people who read the peom , but if you haven't still its a good book... but then I came to recently know about mr aurobindo's poem about the daughter of the sun, savitri- and I got curious... because the poem that parmenides writes also talks about meeting a Goddess at the "Gates of Apollo" , she is the supreme goddess... so its interesting and she is the one who enlightens him about "reality" which is "Time is an unreal", so nothing is moving nothing really changes, and the way to really know the truth is to be "aware" (supposedly this is what I understand).

So this is just an exciting idea, Did parmenides, the father of western philosophy, the head hancho of greek philosophers, the guru of Socrates and plato as well as other philosophers actually met savitri?

 

Just a couple of general comments, as I'm not very familiar with Parmenides.

Many of the early pre-socratic Greek philosophers were mystics - they were not like modern western philosophers who are purely acedemic in their approach. This certainly applies to Plato,who had many ideas similar to those of some Indian philosophy, and it is possible that the ancient Greek mystery schools, one of which Plato was a member of, were influenced by Indian ideas.

In Sri Aurobindo's 'Savitri' time is definitely not seen as unreal. Both time and eternity are real. In a sense, the descent of Savitri is all about the perfecting of time, or the perfection of the cosmic manifestation.

It's also true that ancient Greek poets like Homer believed in the muses, and experienced their poetry as emmanating from the muse of poetry, Herself an aspect of the goddess. In the 'Oddysey' the godess Athene is the special protector of Odysseus - the thing is though that Her help is given only really for quite mundane ends - it's all quite worldly.
In 'Savitri' on the other hand, it's all about the transformation of human consciousness into divine consciousness.

 

Well maybe I didn't give you a good intro then, but I think Aurobindo's description of savitri absolutely fit parmenides' description of the daughter of the Apollo. He too gets enlightened. He talks about "being" and finally realizes that there is no past, present or future, everything is "now" this moment or something like that, its very complicated, but you should definitely read his poem, its very interesting.

 

I'll check it out sometime. But I have to say too that Savitri is not an easy work to understand. It seems to me to go way beyond anything produced by the Greeks, or indeed later western poets.
'Hellenophile' western writers will obviously seek to frame it within their own limited understanding, as they virtually worship the ancient Greek poets as the greatest ever, and are not really open to revise their opinions.
It is worth noting perhaps that Sri Aurobindo said ancient Greek culture is what he terms 'vital-mental' rather than spiritual. I tend to agree with him on that point.

 

CPU(s).