In many religious and philosophical traditions, the concept of the immortality of the soul is a fundamental belief. According to some, the soul is eternal and preexists before birth, and then death is just a temporary separation of the soul from the body, with hope for life after death. This second perspective provides comfort and hope because we believe there is something more than this world, that our soul continues to exist, and that it will be rewarded for our actions and deeds. Regardless of which option we accept, the question of the immortality of the soul inevitably affects our attitude towards life and death. Moreover, Plato raises new questions based on this view: If the soul is immortal, if it comes from the divine, why did it come into being? What is the nature of the “other world,” and what happens to the soul there?
The other world
Plato’s concept of the other world is complex and harmonious, with different aspects portrayed in the works of Gorgias, Phaedo, Phaedrus, and The Republic. Describing the other world, he draws on the works of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Aeschylus, as well as Orphic teachings and ancient traditions.
Death strips the soul bare, separating it from everything that the person possessed, and everything with which they identified during their life: from material possessions to social status. It removes all false supports and anything that is not an inherent part of the soul.
In death, a person stands alone before themselves – as they have made themselves in life. For them, as well as for judges, all their flaws and virtues become visible. Those are the only possessions of the soul that it carries with it.
Who When someone dies, every demon that belonged to him during his lifetime takes him to a place where they have to gather; there they are judged, and then they travel to Hades with the guide who was ordered to take them from here. (…) The path that leads to Hades, it seems to me, is neither simple nor the only one. If there was only one path, there would be no need for a guide because no one would ever get lost. But this way, most likely, there are many crossroads and dead ends. (Phaedo, 108a)
The other world is a world in which the soul is judged, and the sons of Zeus – Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus – judge it. Judging the soul’s life on earth according to divine law, they make their ruling and thus determine its further destiny. Therefore, there are areas where the soul pays for all its sins and areas that correspond to a pure and spiritual life. In the other world, time seems to extend, flowing slower than in the visible world. The soul stays there for about a thousand years, so both reward and punishment surpass the committed deeds tenfold in terms of time. chooses a new life that corresponds to their previous actions and virtues. However, some souls are condemned to Tartarus, the lowest level of the other world, due to their immoral and wicked behavior. On the other hand, the virtuous souls ascend to the higher level of Olympus, where they are rewarded for their righteousness. In this diverse and divided world, there are landscapes such as hills, rivers, lakes, fiery areas, and deserts. Rivers flow in between, with four rivers standing out as they correspond to the four elements and sides of the world: Acheron, Periphlegeton, Cocytus, and Ocean. Additionally, there is the lake of Mnemosyne and the river of forgetfulness, Lethe. Boundaries exist to separate the other world from the visible world. In Plato’s myth of Er, which concludes his Republic, the invisible world is clearly divided into the higher right celestial space and the lower left underground space. In one, the soul is purified from all bodily and sensory experiences, while in the other, it is rewarded according to its merits. Therefore, the afterlife is a process of cleansing the soul from past experiences and renewing its strength so that, upon returning to Earth, it can continue the long journey of self-discovery and understanding its true nature. iki is, according to Plato, a memory of what the soul saw in Hades, and its earthly life is the result of choices made in that world before birth. Something similar happens to the soul after death. Its life in the other world is a memory of its earthly life. The soul needs to remember everything it experienced here, meet with its conscience, and objectively and impartially evaluate all of its choices in this world.
In a sense, the geography of the other world is the geography of the soul itself. As many people, as many invisible worlds. And in each of those worlds, there is its lower and higher heaven: the expanse of the four elements of personal experience and the ethereal expanse of the spirit. In the spiritual expanse, the soul observes a higher reality that has nothing in common with the sensory experiences of transient personality.
After death and soul has to pass through all the paths it has taken during its life. According to Plato, knowledge is the memory of what the soul saw in Hades, and its earthly life is the result of choices made in that world before birth. Something similar happens with the soul after death. Its life in the other world is a memory of the earthly life. The soul needs to remember everything it has experienced here, meet with its conscience, and objectively and impartially evaluate all its choices in this world. The choice of destiny is a free choice. However, if in earthly life a person has the possibility to influence themselves, to change and improve themselves, then after death, only the law of justice can influence the soul. We do not choose our dreams, we only dream them, and they are the result of lived experiences. Similarly, when the soul finds itself in the other world, it cannot choose a way of life there, because the choice was made during earthly life. Every person creates and carries their own Tartarus and their own Olympus within themselves. Those who choose The first corresponds to the sensory aspect of life, while the second is the result of spiritual search.
Life is a process of unfolding the soul from within to the outside, and life after death is a gathering. Liberated from the body, the soul meets itself and its actions.
Hades, the Greek god of the underworld.
Death – the stripping of the soul
According to tradition, in ancient times the soul was judged on the last day of a person’s life, before their death. Some came to this judgment in their best clothes, adorned with their prominent lineage, fame, power, and wealth, and even brought witnesses to confirm their words. Others, without such opportunities, came modestly dressed and unremarkable. There were also those who were disliked by many and unjustly judged because of it. All of this created confusion, as external appearance sometimes decided instead of merits, so those who deserved to go to Tartarus ended up on the Islands of the Blessed and vice versa.
That’s why Zeus He ordered that souls be judged after death. Since then, people do not know the day of their departure, the soul appears naked before the judges, so the verdict is no longer based on external appearance.
After death, as soon as the soul is freed from the body, everything is visible on it – its natural qualities, but also the qualities that have been instilled into it through all its actions and work. (Gorgias, 524d)
Death exposes the soul, separates from it everything that a person possessed, everything with which they identified themselves during their life: from possessions to social status. It removes all false support and everything that is not inherently part of the soul.
In death, a person stands before themselves – as they have shaped themselves in life. For them, as well as for the judges, all their flaws and virtues become visible. They are the only possessions of the soul that it carries with it.
If a person has lived unjustly, their soul is full of scars from falsehood and crime, because every evil deed has left such a mark on it. And everything on the soul is distorted by falsehood and vanity, n nowhere is anything smooth, because it developed without truth during its lifetime. (Gorgias, 525a)
The beauty of a just soul is inherent, as it remains indifferent to everything fleeting, striving to find truth and become better.
The knowledge of ideas is possible because they exist inherently in the invisible world that the soul observed before descending into the circle of necessity. Knowledge is innate, we only remember everything that already exists in a vague form in the soul. The more we remember, the wiser and freer we become. Because only knowledge of the Truth brings true freedom.
Judging the soul is a kind of psychostasis, which involves categorizing everything we have experienced. Although we psychologically perceive everything that happens to us as one indivisible whole, as one single life, it is actually a combination of two modes of human existence. These forms correspond to two paths leading from the crossroads where judgment takes place, and these two paths lead to two different realms of the other world. The crossroads reminds us of the Pythagorean symbolism. The letter “Y” symbolizes the scale on which the soul is weighed. One path corresponds to titanic works, while the other is Dionysian. One path leads the soul away from Good, while the other brings it closer to it; one of the paths is the path of earthly Venus, and the other path is the path of celestial Venus. Otherwise, everything that happens to the soul either injures it or purifies and elevates it. In the Pythagorean school, psychostasis was practiced daily. Before going to sleep, students evaluated their day by answering questions such as: “In what way did I make a mistake today?”, “What did I do?”, “Which of my duties did I not fulfill?”
As Plato says, the soul should be looked at with the eyes of judges from the other world, which means having an inner dialogue with one’s conscience, not justifying oneself and not deceiving oneself. Only by transcending ourselves do we gain a clear vision that gives us the answer to the question: “Have we been better today than yesterday?”
Memory
Before leaving the invisible world, the soul arrives at a deserted plain and there drinks water from the River Lethe, which brings it forgetfulness of everything that nijevog izvora), već i pomoću jezera Mnemozine. Njegova voda ima moć obnoviti i učvrstiti sjećanja na nebeske događaje i božanski način života. Ova voda je rezervirana samo za duše heroja i filozofa, koje slijede svoju strastvenu težnju prema božanskim vrijednostima.
Stoga, kada osoba putuje u drugi svijet, kao što je slučaj s protagonistom, ona također posjećuje jezero Mnemozine. To je mjesto koje personificira majku Muza i svojim vodama obnavlja njihova sjećanja, osnažujući ih za novi život. Protagonistica je pratena svojim genijem sudbine, koji je uvijek uz nju i pruža joj podršku u njenim novim iskustvima.
It is not only that the soul forgets its connection with Heaven. This symbolic meaning is derived from Plato’s Republic, where Plato equates the sensory world with a cave in which people are chained to their places. They cannot move and everything they see and observe are only shadows reflected on the cave walls. At the same time, they cannot know that their knowledge is only knowledge of shadows, not of the true reality that exists outside the cave, and which is the real cause of the existence of the illusory world.
How can we become acquainted with this other reality if it is inaccessible to the senses? How can we learn virtue if it belongs to higher knowledge? Answering these questions, Plato identifies knowledge with recollection. Knowledge of ideas is possible because they exist fundamentally in the invisible world where the soul observed them before descending into the circle of necessity. Knowledge is innate, we only remember everything that already exists in some unclear form within the soul. The more we remember, the wiser and more virtuous we become. more liberated. Because only knowledge of Truth brings true freedom.
In the Phaedrus, Plato compares the soul to winged chariots. In the case of gods, both the horses and the charioteers are of noble origin, while among mortals, one horse is beautiful, good, and obedient, while the other possesses opposite qualities, being heavy and inclined towards the ground. Traveling through the celestial sphere, the souls of gods and the souls of humans observe the world of ideas and the truth, which is the ambrosia – the food of the soul. Due to their imperfections, human souls are constantly fluctuating, and eventually, their wings break, leading them into the cycle of rebirth. Those souls that have seen more, also remember more, making it easier for them to regain the lost ability of flight. While being in the body, the soul can recall what it previously observed through the things of the sensory world, which is a reflection of the world of ideas. The goal of being in the sensory world is to establish the knowledge that the soul possessed and not to turn the soul into a slave of the sensory world. In other words, the sensory world must play the role of symbol for the soul. The soul is compared to winged chariots. In the case of gods, both the horses and the charioteers are of noble origin, whereas in the case of mortals, one horse is beautiful, good, and obedient, while the other has opposite characteristics, being heavy and inclined towards the earth. While travelling through the heavenly vault, the souls of gods and the souls of humans observe the world of ideas and the truth, which is ambrosia – the food of the soul. Due to their imperfections, human souls fluctuate, sometimes rising and sometimes descending, and eventually their wings break, leading them into the cycle of rebirth.
Within the soul is inherently present everything that exists in the world of ideas, albeit to a lesser degree and in an unmanifested form – just like how a seed contains the knowledge of what it can and should become. The growth and manifestation of the hidden is a process of recollection, meaning that the soul can only clearly remember what it has already become and intuitively anticipate what it can become in the future. ofj the abilities we already have, those are the knowledge we have acquired before, during our previous incarnations; they precede any experience in this life, they are the knowledge we know a priori, we just need to remember them. A similar idea is encountered in depth psychology, where archetypes signify innate abilities of the soul to grow in a certain direction. Jung compares them to rivers that have a common source. In their entirety, archetypes are a collection of all the potentials of the human psyche.
True knowledge is the ability to choose true treasure, and thus it differs from ignorance that does not know the nature of what it chooses. It is precisely because of ignorance that the soul chooses something worse, considering it better. This is why a person, when choosing the way of their existence, chooses the worst form, believing it to be better. Remembering means starting to see clearly what we haven’t seen before. This seeing comes in a moment, like a flash of light that makes visible the layers of the soul that have been in the shadow of forgetfulness until then. To remember means And within the soul, be inspired to grow the seed of wisdom, spiritual beauty, and give birth to the soul resembling Zeus, and within oneself, give birth to Athena, the divine ability to always choose what is Beautiful, Good, and Just.
1 The Myth of Er tells the story of a Greek who fell in battle, but his body remained preserved even though several days had passed since his supposed death. When he was already placed on the funeral pyre, Er woke up and began to narrate what he had experienced while seemingly dead.
2 Psychostasia – a mythological weighing of the soul in the underworld.