I don't need to introduce myself, I'm already very well presented. I am a volunteer teacher of an international institution. Basically, an institution that belongs, that exists worldwide, and that has many other teachers beyond me. I invite those who do not know us to know our YouTube channel, where more than 600 lectures are offered for free. Let's go to our topic today. How can philosophy contribute to promoting mental health? This topic that was asked of me, I tried to do it with all my heart and with a reference that I start with it, it is very
necessary. Philosophy is not psychiatry or psychology. I couldn't even start giving tips on therapy related to pathology, pathology A, B or C. This would be an improperness on my part, invasive, for sure, and at a certain level even irresponsible. Considering that we are talking about health and we don't play with it. By the way, talking about human nature, you don't play with anything. So we are going to put philosophy's advice within what is proper to philosophy. I intend to talk about reflections, which suggest postures, especially linked to the question of human values, which are shown,
and this is also the subject of many researches over time, Are shown as a very effective therapeutic, the practice of values. And then, yes, we are well within the field of philosophy. Philosophy deals exactly with this issue of values, as prevention and even as a posture that can lead, assisted by all other fields that are necessary, assisted by psychiatry, by psychology, we get along very well, can suggest some outputs for the problems that have already been installed, those that are already lived. So once talking to a psychiatrist, it is very common, I am a teacher
for 32 years, a volunteer teacher, it is common that in these 32 years there are episodes, sometimes, by the way, I must say, with the passing of time in recent years, more and more numerous, of depressed students, of anxious students, the growth of this has been considerable, although I have never stopped to elaborate any kind of statistical treatment, But within the sample that are the students interested in philosophy, there has been a set of cases, increasingly. And talking to this psychiatrist, he told me something that made all sense to me. In the case of psychiatry,
when a drug is recommended, what is done is to recommend something that gives the patient lucidity, so that he, lucid, goes in search of the solutions to his problem. That is, it is not expected that a drug offers the cure of a symptom, Be it of what nature it is, but that it offers the lucidity that was lost, so that this person acquires a mental posture, goes after a mental posture and a concrete posture of life that can transform the trigger of those symptoms, that can act on this trigger. I found this explanation very interesting.
And from there I considered, and still consider today, that a partnership between psychiatry, Psychology, philosophy, in the treatment of human evils, of a psychological or psychiatric nature, is a very successful partnership, because once we want to get the triggers, then yes, philosophy works very well. Psychology, without a doubt, will act on the personal causes that interfere in that trigger. Now we find human beings Who have very pressing doubts about what a human being is, what is expected of him in the scheme of life, what justice is, what fraternity is, and why practice them, why we
should be good, and why we are in the field of philosophy. In this sense, then, let's talk about what is the loan that philosophy offers to human mental health. Why do we suffer? This is one of the most, let's say, immediate issues of the human being. Once something happened to me in the previous time, the pre-pandemic, sorry, the previous pandemic, in the pre-pandemic, where I saw a mother, I was passing by an office where I had been invited to make a conference, Like here, and I saw a mother who was driving her son, she was
a child who should have seven or eight years old, no more than that. She probably took her to a medical consultation or to an odontologist, because of the boy's behavior, which was a total revolt. She didn't want to go at all, she was grumbling, crying, And the mother was taking her. There, for so many years, he stopped, stopped grumbling, stopped crying, turned to this mother and asked, mom, why do we have to do things that hurt? Why do you always tell me that the things that hurt are good? And the mother was impatient For that
question and kept dragging the boy. I found the question so sensational that if I could, I would sit on the floor there with that boy to talk about it. Look, you are the ones who should be invited that today adults ask this kind of question, it is very rare. We are very attached to the superficial, the banality of everyday life. Ask why we should suffer, and even more, why suffering can sometimes be good? That is pure philosophy. I was thinking, at what point in our lives do they steal this curiosity from us? So deep and
so essential. And most importantly, the boy's face was not lying. He really wanted an answer. And today there is a huge work, to make adult and mature men ask this question and even more, to want to actually receive an answer. It is in honor of this boy, the philosopher who exists within all of us, that today I dedicate myself to seek, together with you, an answer to this question. Well, the Buddhist tradition, the Dhammapada, which is the sacred book by the excellence of Buddhism, he will say that pain is a vehicle of consciousness, it is
a correction. From a physical point of view, this is very obvious. That tooth that hurts allows you to save it before it is irremediably lost. And so it is with all body aches. Sometimes when it hurts, it's too late, right? Today we have preventive exams, which are wonderful, but in general, pain tells us that something wrong is happening and allows us to go after the correction of this error. This happens on a physical level and we know that. And we practically act immediately, incontinent. We look for a doctor, a dentist, whatever it is. From a
psychological point of view, not always. We should attend to the call of our pains to see what is in us that needs to be corrected. What is the sharp point That needs to be polished? And if we look at this tradition, wide and ancient, which is Buddhism, they take this question as the center of their philosophy. Buddhist philosophy is based, above all, on this question. Why do we suffer and how to act correctly in relation to pain? If we take a philosophical current, which is Stoicism, which is now in fashion, fortunately, Stoicism has returned to
fashion, maybe you've heard of it, of phrases by Epictetus, Seneca, Marco Aurélio. They spoke in a very direct and practical way of human problems. And they lived in a time of crisis. So, they are so close to us today. Marco Aurélio, who was a great philosopher of Rome, he said the following, nothing happens to man that is not proper to man. Therefore, nothing happens to Lucy that is not proper to Lucy. This is called the theory of responsibility. What does that mean? It's like we imagine, speaking in our current language, that we came to the
world for a purpose. This would be a truism. A basic truth. We came to the world to grow as human beings. To get out of here A little better than we entered. This seems to me to be a basic premise, quite acceptable. We came here to grow as human beings. To get out a little bigger. To move away a little from ignorance towards wisdom. This is the principle of philosophy. Love is wisdom. Walk towards it. If this really proceeds, taking this as a possibility, we can realize that it's like we came to the world with
a encrypted card that attracts us to situations that allow us to polish those edges that we need to polish to fit better in the puzzle of life. To better fulfill our function as human beings. To be realized, to be more complete. So if you see, your personal power has this magnetism to attract to you what allows you to grow, what will polish your edges, your high points, this person, This situation, did not enter your life for a purposeful and personal reason. This person entered my life to chase me, to hurt me. No. If this person
is, for example, a boring person, he is boring because he is the best Who managed to be within his own evolutionary scheme. But he entered your life because you called him. That is, maybe you realize after some time, that you needed to develop patience, empathy, or maybe, the real boring is you. This person allowed you to see this. If it were not this person, it would be another. But you would need to go through it. Why? Your need for experience to grow, attracts the elements of our life that will allow us to leave from the
other side, greater. Because this is the expected reaction In the face of difficulties. Let's propose that we just leave from the other side greater than we entered. This is the idea of the theory of responsibility that depersonalizes the agents of our suffering. And it is already very good, because it fights frontally something called victimization. It is one of the doors of entry of our psychological problems. One of the most acute and intense. So, the theory of responsibility proposes us a escape from impotence before difficulties. Nothing happens to the human being that is not proper to
the human being. Therefore, it is also proper for the human being To find a way out for that. Epictetus, another historical philosopher who was a slave, he said the following. When someone pejoratively called him a slave, he said, do you know what a slave is? It is that one who, in what depends on him, does nothing. In what does not depend on him, He keeps protesting and imprecating infinitely. So imagine the Lords, who I intend to reach Poupex at a critical time, at six o'clock in the afternoon. We all know what the monumental axis is.
I leave in a tight time to get here and I'm late. And in the middle of the way I protest against the city administrator, against the transit drivers, against the whole world. When? I can't do anything about these things. But leaving half an hour earlier I could have done perfectly. It depended only on me. And I didn't do it. This is a slave. In what depends on me, I do nothing. And in what does not depend, as it is popularly said, I give the donkey in knife tips. So the theory of responsibility also predicts this.
That in the same way that nothing happens to the man that is not his own, no problem is greater than our possibilities Of answer. And when a problem comes to our life, it honors us and informs us what is our size, what is our size of resilience, of capacity of overcoming, of capacity of response and to get out of the other side. Problems are the size of men. Continuing. Tools that the human being Has for this. And then it's something that makes me very happy because it has been a language increasingly uniform in these three
fields that I addressed. It is not difficult today to find psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, and even scientists Who have written and published the most important and most important articles in the books of the most different lines that say that the development of values is important for the recovery of the human being in relation to his pain. And philosophy Deals exactly with that. Human values serve to soften the problems related to mental health or can they mean a mental posture, this that today is called mindset. It can mean a mindset that favors you To have a greater
immunity against these seas or even a revelation of the world or even to reverse the seas already established. Will it be? It seems so. And then we enter the field of philosophy itself. I will start Working with you about three values because I base myself on the Platonic criterion. I will not go into details in relation to this that it is very far from the topic. Plato said that the unity that the universe begins in the UNO from the unity The first spatial form is born, which is the tetrahedron. The tetrahedron which is a pyramid
of face and triangular base. It is the UNO that when it manifests itself in the world needs a base with at least three points. So he talks about this original unit, The demiurge, the creator of the universe, this building being that manifests itself first in three values. And these three initial values from where all the others unfold would be will, love and intelligence. Therefore all the virtues, I already gave a lecture On a occasion where I talked about this, how all the values and human virtues unfold from these three. How to branch out from these
three, will, love and intelligence. Let's talk a little about the three first. And how they can be Tools of precaution and even tools of curative in a certain way of approaching a psychological or psychiatric evil already established. Starting with will, we would also need a long time. And I advise those who are curious, It's been many years and many titles within our channel of New Acropolis on YouTube. There are lectures about everything you can imagine there referring to philosophy. There is one exclusively about will, which is one of the most Elevated powers of man. For
the Indian tradition, they call will of Atma, that which the human being has of the highest. Today we can't even use this word that it is very emptied, it became synonymous with desire. So in general, When I talk about will, I talk about will force, which is clearer. Will force, determination is what the human being has of the most powerful. The human will force is capable of irrigating deserts, draining swamps, diverting the course of comets, or at least at first Consider that this is already possible. Isn't that? That is, capable of creating, maintaining, transforming, recovering
or renewing many things around us. With a tendency increasingly expansion. And therefore, if it is able to act So incisively on things, it must have a very great power too to act on the creator of human things, in the case of the human being. Considering that our main and primordial creation we are ourselves. And we are the most powerful Creation of the human being. And we are the most powerful creation of ourselves. I don't know if you have already stopped to think about it. Nature does not need that we create flying machines. It has a
lot of flying bodies. It does not need fast objects. It has already created the speed of light. It needs us to create ourselves. And this is our fundamental creation. And if the will can so much about external creations, evidently, it will also be able about the creation of ourselves. Which is our fundamental work. So, if the will is so powerful, I usually give an example, which is the funnel. A very simple example, even if you implore me, forgive me, but it is a good image. And sometimes an image recovers information for us, as it is
popularly said, more than a thousand words. I usually ask you to visualize a funnel. You enter into a problem in a thousand ways. To get out is one thing. Will. Many times we cultivate, when we are in the middle of a difficulty, whether of a systemic character, or of a personal character, The habit of analysis focused on the past. It is not bad, but it is not enough. If you stop there, you can transfer responsibilities to others, victimize yourself and accommodate yourself. It is as if there was a dirty mark on the wall. Someone passed,
Smashed some object and got dirty. I find out who it was and I get comfortable. Every time someone says, wow, how this wall is ugly, dirty, I say, ah, but it was someone else. In other words, I don't take the cloth, I don't take the cleaning material And clean the wall. I simply attribute it to a culprit and I get comfortable. This is very common. The fact is that whatever it is that has caused a problem, what solves it, it is not analysis focused on the past only, but it is synthesis Projected for the future.
I am here and I want to get there. And I will get there. You know why? Because I want to. If I want, I can, I will. As Julius Caesar said, who would have said in his Gallic Wars, Come, come and come. This is a good example of a willful expression. It doesn't matter how I got here, but I'll get there and it will be now. And it seems that when we positively commit to the future, the information of the past that we need come to light, Comes to light. And our latent powers also come
to light. They must remember fairy tales, where the prince commits himself to save the princess of the dragon. And in the middle of the way, walking towards this noble, just and good goal, He finds a magic sword, he finds a cover of invisibility, he finds a bird that informs him a magic word. In other words, his latent powers will flourish in the middle of the way, when he commits himself to the future. And this is how it is with the human being. The will not used, then you are stagnant inside that funnel, wanting to find
responsible in the past, and sometimes even bothered by the situation. It's something amazing, but it's a fact and reported By many traditions. At a certain moment, victimization gives us a greater pleasure than a possible cure. And as I said, the person who is in the middle of the way, he is the one who is the one and we start to extract this pleasure from him And we do not want to get out of there. And when we feel that something is the neighbor that can take us out of there, we move away from that even.
This becomes a addiction and something curious. Gibran, sorry, Not Gibran, in this case, Carlos Drumond de Andrade. He has a passage of a poem that he says this habit of suffering that amuses me so much is sweet heritage and Tabirana. Do you remember Where he wrote it? No, This habit of suffering that amuses me so much. It did not only amuse Drummond. Humanity also has this habit. Then comes victimization, when we do not use the will. Victimization comes. We start to think that the whole world is against us, the whole world is chasing us. This
is a door to pathologies. A very open and well-paved door. Guilt. Who is guilty? Sometimes I myself begin to find myself guilty of everything. Then begins a process of loss of self-esteem, of complexes and a whole set of elements also worrying. Epictetus, that slave philosopher I mentioned, said The extinction of guilt marks the beginning of moral progress. I believe, Epictetus, that psychological progress too. This phrase could be complemented. The extinction of guilt. There are no guilty. There are responsible. I take responsibility and I walk to correct what was done. What else? Blockages such as shyness,
insecurity, etc. They are born from the moment I feel powerless to project a way out to the future and walk determinedly there. That is, each of these things, if we were together here with me, a psychiatrist, he could open for you. I do not feel authorized to do this. But he could open for you. There are many pathologies related to these doors. These doors that open when the door of will closes. The feeling of impotence, of incapacity, for example, is the mother of many pathologies. And all the complexes that come from there. What else? Continuing,
still in relation to the will, one of the elements, one of the corollaries, One of the consequences that comes from there. Fear of what we reject. And anxiety. Anxiety for what we want. Once I can't walk, I'm stuck, I can't project my will to the future, go in the direction of what I want, or go in the direction of fighting what I fear, as I don't have this initiative, I get stuck by the fear of what I fear. And by the anxiety of what I want. And in the expectation that something will take it away
from me or bring it to me. I myself feel powerless to do something about it. So this fear, which in a fair proportion is natural, and this yearning that in a proportion, let's say, more basic, is also acceptable, can enter a pathological path. And then there will be a panic in the psyche, which can often generate the derivative of this word panic, which is panic. And many other consequences that would be better treated by a specialist. Isn't that so? So, whoever acts, surpasses the achievement. Do not desire or fear. A person with a well-designed will,
with a well-chained will, will probably avoid that fear and desire enter this psychological sphere. They have a good chance of doing it. And even if they can't avoid it, they have a good chance of correcting the direction that this slide caused. Once they can channel their will, they have the ability to get up, They have the ability to get up, they have the ability to get up, to get up again from a moment of disattention and to resume their trajectory. It's logical, far from me, for God's sake. I live very closely with people who suffer
from problems of intense depression, of acute anxiety problems, of panic syndrome and everything else. Far from me to say that a person who is in the middle of such a problem can channel the will and leave. That's not what I'm trying to say. And then, many times, it is necessary, I would say, that in the vast majority of the times, a support from any of the areas already mentioned. Then you really need a therapist, you need a medicine, because the will is very weakened even by the organic reactions that this evil generates. Far from me
to say such insensitivity. I know it's necessary. What I say is not that, understand well. I say that a person who, during his life, has been in a state of depression, has been doing his best in his life, works to channel and project his will, he will not be inexorable. It can fail at some points. But as he knows the secret, the recipe to recreate it, he can recreate it with greater ease than he who has never worked to sculpt the will. Let that be well understood. That be the practice of always walking in the
direction of the things that we want or desire. We want to overcome. It can help us in a moment of crisis, in a moment of weakness that we all suffer, recover this recipe that we have already practiced some day. That's right. What we do not dominate becomes autonomous in us. This is a very important thing to understand. Imagine that this arm of mine has tremendous power. We know the importance of human evolution, for example, the oppositional thumb, Precision pressure, who has studied this in anthropology knows the importance of this, including the evolution of hominids. Now
imagine that I never tried to control this arm of mine. For some reason I never tried to move it. One fine day that I need to move, I have no control. So I put all my physical energy on it and it will come out a disjointed thing. I will have to work a long time until I have a meticulous control of it, Capable of making small things with this arm of mine. A will that you never controlled, that you never worked with it. When you try to manipulate it, it can go out making aggressive, violent
movements. It can go out looking like something that you have to put down because it is evil, while you do not learn to direct it. And it really is like that. I've seen people who started a process to develop some determination, Some willpower over life. And the first attempts were a disaster. And they wanted, in many cases, even if they did, to go back to a state of weakness where they were more soft and not so aggressive. Do you know why? Autonomous and uncoordinated movement, of what we never worked to control. And if we don't
work as much as before, we will have to go through this stage. Why can't we live without human will? It is fundamental. Certainly, learning to control it can cause some damage. But never using it causes much greater damage. Love. We can't give a lecture that, look, would not give a lecture, would give a course, just to talk about love. Think of a subject that has unfolds in all civilizations, In all points of time and space. And that is worth a meticulous approach. But we know very well that love is a human potential and at the
same time an imperative need of the human being. There is something curious in our education, which has been accentuating itself a lot in recent times, that is, from a century and a little to here, where education, since our most tender childhood, Is concerned with teaching men to dominate the physical body, but not the emotional or mental body. So we don't know very well, how to manage our energy, our affective phenomenon, which is love. Just as we don't know how to manage our thoughts. There is a moment between us to talk about curious things. I remember
in my time of graduation At the university, which has been going on for a long time, a curious memory, I believe it still exists today, are those little boxes for students in the library. Don't you think that's funny? They simply fit the student so that he focuses on reading. Then what happens? The student, so cheerful and cute, writes in the whole little box A lot of things. The next one who gets there doesn't look at the book, he keeps reading what is written in the little box. I think that's very funny. In other words, we
are too scattered, we have no control over our mind. Could it be possible? I believe so. If we were to train this, how do we train our legs when walking? If I say, I will get close to the armchair, legs take me there, they take me there. Imagine if I had no control over my legs and I wanted to do this simple operation. How long would it take me to do this? What if I could have this same control over my emotions and my thoughts? Thoughts concentrate here because I need to understand it in depth.
Is it possible? It seems so. And with emotions too. Uneducated emotions tend to gravitate around the one who has them. That is, selfishness, the use of the other, lack of empathy, which are three elements with a pathological potential that falls between us. They can generate a serious psychopathology, the use of the other, The insensibility to the feelings of the other. There are a lot of possibilities quite complex. So, selfishness, we become the predator who uses everything without concern if things have as much right to be here as we do. It leaves the earth behind us.
There is a phrase by Leon Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, who says the following, there are those who pass through a forest And only see firewood. From the universe of life that I have there, I only think, what is it for? What is it for? There is no consideration at any time of how I can serve this. That is, it is very difficult to love in this way, because love is a feeling with expansive tendencies. This is a predator who passes and leaves the earth behind him, Which is already complicated, psychologically speaking. And the love
that takes the other as a witness of my personal experience, or someone who is here to satisfy my feelings of loneliness and lack. That is, I take the other as a means for your personal satisfaction. Immanuel Kant, in his Fundament of Metaphysics of Customs, said that there is nothing as immoral as taking a rational being, that is, a human being, As a means. The human being is always the end in itself. How many times in a relationship, sometimes temporary, but sometimes even long, a partner takes the other as a means? To satisfy some of your
needs. With a degree of zero empathy, to put oneself in the other's place, to understand the other. It highlights my definition of empathy which is wrong and incomplete From a psychological point of view. Empathy is not to put oneself in the other's place. Empathy is to dispel yourself from your personality and try to understand the world from the other's point of view, with what he lived, with his history, with his values and not with mine. Otherwise you will deduce that what the other does is an insensitivity, because I would not do it in his place.
But he is not you. And he is not inferior to you. He has another point of view that, suddenly, if you are willing to learn, he adds to yours. In the Greek Ophic Fragments there is a wonderful phrase, a short one, which says I offer you my mystery in demand of yours. Do you understand this? I am not the owner of any truth. And true empathy is to want to see the world From another angle beyond mine, as important as mine, which is yours. I see the world from your angle and offer you my angle,
I offer you my mystery in demand of yours. And we leave, as Hegel said, making a dialectic, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. We leave the two greatest of this. If I do not consider myself the owner of any truth, and have the spirit of a perfect apprentice, I will be the owner of a perfect apprentice. This enriches the love feeling tremendously, the characteristic of love feeling. I want to understand the world as you understand it, even to help you and you help me. We change our points of view and grow together. This today, too, empathy. Look, let
me tell you something that is even a little private from the point of view of what I do. When a student sits in front of me To study philosophy, the first two things that I am concerned about is, first, I am not the owner of any truth. Second, I have a perfect spirit of apprentice. This is for philosophy, it is to be basilar, otherwise you can not even take the first step. Curiosity for love is also. For love is also fundamental, this premise. So, lack of empathy, the use of the other, all of them are
potentially pathological. The development of true love, in its fullness, in its depth, would add a lot to the man of immunity against a series of psychological, psychiatric problems, even of a certain gravity. And the lack, too, another element to be taken into consideration. Solitude, lack, feelings that also come from the lack of love, fully developed. The lack of love is, in itself, when well used. There is a poem that I admire a lot, it is long, I do not know if it is memorized, otherwise I would not be satisfied To recite it to you, but
he says in one of his verses, the greatest prize of those who love is precisely to be loving. Do you understand that? And there is a philosophical phrase of a thinker of the 20th century called Nilakantha Srihan, he said the following, Subscribe to here Now go in search of him and thus you will realize That your heart is the heart of all things I left my heart when I say good morning, looking into the eyes of the person who went by and really wishing well for her. I leave my heart when I open the elevator
door and I hope people leave before they want to come, with an anxiety wall behind me. I leave my love when I leave home earlier so as not to stress people in a traffic that is already so stressful. When you look at the night, you will see that you left your heart imprinted on all the steps you climbed. When you do this, you distribute your heart through the four corners of the world, love is self-sufficient. There is very little lack. Natural lack to a certain extent. It becomes acute and worrying when we save too much
of our ability to distribute love. A love that you distribute through the four corners of the world, wherever you are, when you go out carving your heart everywhere you have been, it overcomes itself, it gives you a feeling of great autonomy. And then you are ready to receive love, but not to be dependent or charge others with this love. Receive it with great pleasure, when he comes. But do not create a relationship of dependence or even of charge in relation to others. Which is very complex and also opens the door to a series of complications,
especially within a sadistic relationship. And now moving on to intelligence. The intelligence, etymologically speaking, already says a lot. She will say, intelligere, which is the origin of the word, escolher dente, inter elegere, escolher dente. Intelligence has a lot to do with discernment, the ability to choose. And it is said that the greatest of all choices is to choose among the things that the world offers you to be, who you really are. That is, the greatest intelligence of all, pásmem, is identity. It is to find yourself in the middle of what the world suggests or even
tries to impose that you should be. And it is fundamental. Both intelligence and identity, which is its corollary and consequence in our lives. It is a necessity and a source of fulfillment. It is impressive how we miss understanding the world, since this child who impressed me so much and asked this question to her mother, to the fundamental questions. I keep remembering my little daughters, because, obviously, we unfortunately do not remember my questions, but I remember how curious they were in relation to everything. My daughter barely spoke right when she turned to me and asked, Mom,
why does a cat have a tail? Can you imagine an adult being concerned about asking this kind of question? You may say, what nonsense! Why? Why, sometimes, a plant, the leaves grow making a spiral around its stalk? I remember some details, I was a little more grown up, I looked at the wall and was so impressed that a crack on the wall Was making a drawing similar to the branches of the plant in the garden. And that's exactly what happens. It follows a sequence that we know, a sequence of arboreal, the fie, which is present
everywhere. I was very curious to know why those ants are in line like that. There must be some purpose in this. It was sometimes difficult to explain, for me, to go from one place to another, because I was paying attention to so many things on the way that I was late. We lose the vital curiosity to understand the why's of life. In the little things you find a parallel to the big things. Cleaning a window well, I looked out and saw, wow, how I see better the landscape of my backyard. And if I clean my
ideas, my feelings better inside me, don't I see myself more deeply? If I try to extract everything that is pollution, everything that is contamination that comes from outside, don't I see myself better? Don't I know myself better? And it was. My attempt in this sense was a success. You start to develop a symbolic mentality, Intelligence is a necessity. And at the same time, it is a realization, because a small conclusion that you reach is an ecstasy. We feed ourselves with ideas. And exactly because we no longer know how to feed ourselves with ideas, feed ourselves
with ideas, to be more correct in conjugation, is that we are manipulated by so many people without any idea. But only with a highly fallacious game of words. We are too manipulated, people. I've already reached the point to convince a class of mine, a class of students who told me that I had to read a fashion book X. I got to the point of buying this book X, I never had so much time available, but I bought it, and I did a logical analysis of this book. I came to the conclusion that from the first
premise to the last conclusion, there was not a single original idea in that book. There was only a misrepresentation of fashion ideas. A single idea from the author that he would add. This in almost 300 pages. And it was a book that was among the ten most, a best seller of the time. How is that common? How we don't love the idea, We don't love ideas, we lose this ability to enter into ecstasy in front of them, we don't know how to recognize when they are missing. This is a dish made for the manipulation of
all species. So, intelligence is a necessity and a source of achievement. Not used, we are without identity, as we have already said, without discernment. And from the moment I have intelligence, I have an identity. I am Lucy. Who is Lucy? Lucy is the one who has as her purpose of life to reach a greater degree of justice and fraternity than I have today. I recommend that your purpose of life is always associated with human values, That do not change and justify your whole life. So I know when I'm going in that direction, I'm being faithful
to Lucy. When I'm not, I'm out of myself. I know that when I'm going in that direction, I'm fair, I'm fraternal, I'm honest. I'm not going in the opposite direction. What is the value of a person who doesn't know where he's going? What is correct for those who don't know where they want to go? I want to get to this TV device. Now it's correct, now it's incorrect. I don't want to get anywhere. What is my value? Is it what everyone thinks? Is it what is in fashion? Discernment, how do I make choices if I
don't want to build anything? Realize then that intelligence generates identity. That identity protects us in various ways. Even manipulation, which is also an element that reduces us to half of ourselves. All men die, but not all men live. Some only survive. And this survival, this life for half, as Gibran would say, is also a source of various pathologies. Of frustration and of various pathologies. Because the half that we don't develop, we lack. And it develops in us a pain for something we don't even know what it is. It is a pain for something that we
don't know what it is. Without thoughts and even feelings. The example of the back seat, which is very simple. Imagine that life is a trajectory that you choose. If you guide your vehicle here. In the front seat, driving in the direction you consciously chose. Or in the back seat, with your eyes closed, being driven by who knows who, or where. It just requires that the back seat be comfortable. And have a good service on board. This is to exchange the identity, the purpose of life, for mere comfort and pleasure. We are very invited to this
today. We do absolutely nothing, but it is a comfortable nothing. Obviously, the nothing will not fulfill the same needs that everything would. This will generate frustration too. This will generate emptiness too. We exchange our identity for comfort. And there are a number of examples that I could give, that are very present in what we call our current culture. The induction to identify the realization with the law of the least effort. Very, very, very common. The happiness of stones and not of human beings. It would be a great waste of the amount of potentials that a
man has in a stone. And nature does not make waste. It did not make us for that. The race for impossible and insufficient models of happiness. So, what is happiness within this model? A research was done once, about the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They did this research. They took samples in ten most diversified points of the globe. About what happiness would be for those people. And they got a response with a curiously low standard deviation. Happiness for those people was an equivalent consumption standard of a North American average man. A very low deviation. Most people
answered something around that. Said differently. Now, we all know, using a very simple mathematical model, that if we take the average consumption standard of a North American man, and multiply it by more than 7 billion human beings, we do not have a planet, we have a five-year-old, which will last a decade. Nature does not support, does not pay that price. Therefore, we are doomed to dream of a happiness model that is impossible mathematically speaking. So, we are induced to seek, to replace this impossible happiness in the field of fantasy. And we unfold. In the field
of escape, and we unfold. Escape can be a fantasy, it can be a addiction. And then there is a huge variety offered by the market. You fight a addiction, and another one is created automatically. That is, you fought only one way of extrapolation, of catching your frustration. Soon another one is created. And another, and another, and another. A human being who is not happy with what he does, with what he lives, he flees even through smoke signals. Which will say through the internet, social networks, etc. Who is frustrated will flee. For more or less compromising
addictions. If we can make such a rigid scale in what steals our lives. And this is a slavery. Another form of slavery. Epíteto included some. This is another one that we could consider. The addiction, the escape from one's own life, is a form of slavery. Difficult to reverse sometimes. A high price to reverse. And pathological too, evidently. Use of our attributes. That is, the use of will, love, intelligence and everything that derives from them. Brings us to fulfillment. It is interesting to observe a feeling, which is the feeling of the duty fulfilled. Of a humanly
lived day. See what psychological state it brings. Of fullness, of completeness, of the sleep of the righteous. Kits with heaven and earth. Happy with the trace we leave in the world today. And this completeness, this realization, it protects us. It does not leave voids where strange elements can penetrate. Therefore, it increases our immunity in the psychological field. It increases our immunity in the mental field, specifically speaking. So the full man has no voids or voids to be filled with strange elements. And human fullness, like the fullness of all things, exists exactly, resides exactly in being
what it is. Have you seen how wonderful it is? Everyone has seen, right? A beautiful sunrise or sunset. Sometimes we go on vacation to the edge of the sea just to watch a sunset. Brazil is also rich in sunrises and wonderful sunsets. Now, in the spring season, we start to look at that little plant in our garden. That stayed quiet all year and starts to arouse flowers. How wonderful that is! How beautiful it is! Imagine that a human being who performs as such, Does what corresponds to him in the scheme of nature. To be born
and to be born again is the earth spinning and doing what corresponds to him in the scheme of nature. Around the sun. A flower that sprouts is a plant doing what corresponds to him in the scheme of nature, of the seasons. A human being doing what corresponds to him. It is as beautiful as being born or being born again. A flower that sprouts in the spring. It means a being that coincides with himself, that is realized. And this fullness does not leave gaps where strange elements can penetrate, at least not very deeply. Each being is
realized by being what it is. Pindarú had this other phrase that I like too much. Be who you are knowing. Interesting, right? Discover. Dive deeply into yourself. Find your human potentials. The values that nature gave you as potentials. Realize these values. And so you become truly human. Be who you are. That is, we are human in potential. Realize this potential. Knowing, within this kit of tools that nature gave you, what is inside. And learning to use them. Take as much use as possible. Go to the limit of your possibilities in the use of your human
potentials. And it will take to the maximum limit of your potentialities the psychological immunity that you have. This is a preventive. And it can also be curative. When we recover, we have that breath through a good therapy, a good medicine, that breath of lucidity. Try to develop this antidote. Which is valuable. And this phrase by Pindarú is very similar to the one I know about myself, about philosophy. Be who you are knowing. Try to know who you are. Try to see what all your latent powers are. And use. Use these tools so that they are
not autonomous and aggressive. Use your tools. And you will see that you will have a very high immunity in these fields. We will see that in history, men who used their potentials very completely, were men of a level of motivation, of a level of commitment to life. Until the last moment. And people with these two characteristics leave few gaps for more serious elements to penetrate. Few gaps. It may happen, but perhaps it does not reach so deeply. A serious statistic has never been made about it. But it seems to me, I believe you agree with
me, That Mohandas Gandhi, trying to free India from English imperialism, it was difficult for him to fall into a deep abyss. Because the gap between an idea and another, one movement and another, was too small for very deep abysses to enter. It was a continuous gap. He himself says in his autobiography, My Life and My Experiences with Truth, that there was not a day when he did not conceive a new idea. The space between one and the other was quite small. That's it. It overflows, it sows, it cures. Look at this Indian proverb. This belongs
to the Vedanta Hindu school. See what a wonderful proverb. The tree does not taste its own fruits. The river does not drink its own waters. The clouds do not rain on themselves. The strength of the strong must be used for the benefit of all. This is another attribute that derives from love, which is generosity. The more I think about the need of the other, of the whole, whether they are my friends, my family, my community or humanity as a whole, the less my pain hurts in myself. I have learned a lot during the pandemic. An
act of generosity per day. You will see how the discouragement, the downfall, the feeling of impotence, decreases. When I think about the whole, my own evil is in perspective. It shows its real size. If I look only at it, it seems to me, it seems like a dragon about to devour me. When I think about the other, the whole, my evils minimize themselves. This is what this proverb says. This is the work of generosity. Committing to the whole minimizes many of your particular problems. That is why an idealist, a person who is responsible for life,
who commits himself to life, is a person with few obstacles to enter into more serious problems. It is possible. It can happen momentarily. But there are more tools to overcome. Good immunity. No vacuums or voids. With a lot of courage and delivery capacity. Two virtues that today we don't even remember they exist. Courage and delivery capacity. To a dream, to an ideal that justifies your whole life. Cicero, great orator and Roman philosopher, said, make sure you are a sum factor for the people whose lives you participate in. Can you imagine what Cicero said to Lucilio?
A person who faithfully obeys this principle. To have many obstacles for evils that come to hit her deeply and immobilize her. Every day I want to be a sum factor so that the people who have passed through my life are a little better because they have passed through my life. So that the world is a little better because I existed. So that I myself am a little better, so that I don't live in vain. So that I am a sum factor. What a wonderful suggestion! There may be moments of downfall. There probably must be. There
may be moments of sadness. There must be many. But look, there is a grip and a so deep delivery that pulls forward, that there is no time to go deep into this feeling. Because there is a propulsion engine pulling you forward a thousand times. You can't sink too much because you don't advance and sink at the same time. They are two difficult movements to do. Therefore, you are pulled forward. This virtue of the grip, Of responsibility, of delivery, are wonderful. And who used it? Usually he had a psychological life that tended to a greater degree
of stability. Even when it falls, it rises faster. Because falling, we all fall. It is inexorable. Men with great missions and passionate about them, about these missions, they fall a little. And they always rise again. I saw it in history. I already gave an example for you. Have you seen that wonderful movie that I always recommend? The Schindler List. What did that man do in one of the most difficult historical moments that humanity has ever gone through in the heart of Nazi Germany? He could only have fallen. He could even have killed himself From so
much depression in such a horrible moment to live like that. Instead of dying, he gave his life for a greater cause. Because he could have been killed. Any moment he was caught, he would be executed. He decided, if your life didn't make much sense, it's like a nice plate of food. If I don't want a clean and healthy plate of food, I give it to someone, there is a lot of hunger in the world. If my life seems to have no meaning for me, now I present it. I present it to the whole. I present
it to humanity. And he did it. The moment to have a downfall like that, look, it's hard. The moment to feel depressed like that, it's complicated. We now live in a pandemic, But it's because of natural causes. Now, when a human being causes something of that gravity, it's hard. To believe in the human being, even to believe in oneself, and a man, that really happened. That man was able to do that. Motivation, clenching, commitment, in a circumstance like that, For a cause like that, that managed to rescue him from a hole without the bottom of
apathy and depression. Which is very easy to have at that moment, in moments like that. Karma Futuro is already India, once again, the Vedantic thought, and I really like this definition. Karma Futuro, imagine the following, that I am walking at my own pace, without forcing, without accelerating the step, without haste, without pause, In relation to a moment in the future. Another person has also been walking to that same moment, in such a way that she will cross with your trajectory, at some point in the future. If you keep your pace, without haste, without pause, you
will be the opportunity that you will have, to recover your hopes. She has been beaten so much for life, that if you are not there for some reason, Right after that point, there is an abyss. She has no more hopes. This person does not know who you are, does not even know that you exist. But her need to live, to recover your hopes, pulls you to the future. Any waste of time, for any banality that you have in the middle of the way, you will miss this commitment. And something or someone will fall into an
abyss. Because you did not fulfill your commitment to life, which did not demand more from you than you could give. It demanded that you were faithful to your potentialities, to your pace, to your possibilities. And do not waste time in the moment, in the current moment with banalities, Or by letting dangerous voids that you have been in for a long time. The need of the other, that you do not know the face, but you know that it exists, pulls you to the future. And Shankaracharya says in this passage, who is the great Vedantic master, is
this need. We should all be absolutely sure that it exists. And it pulls us to the future at this moment. Think about when you are in a moment of inertia. I do not want to get up from bed in the morning. Okay, I will make this concession. I will miss my commitments and I will give this concession to inertia. What price will I pay for this? Human pain. Someone is waiting for me in the future and I will not be there. You realize that it is a morally expensive price. It is almost a propulsion ball
that throws you out of bed. It's amazing. Use it. It is a fantastic psychological exercise. And it is a good motivation for us to be attentive to the voids, to the voids. And the commitment that propels us to the future is a precious ally. Jamblico, a great academic, Platonist, a follower of Plato, has this phrase That is part of a larger period that I brought to you that I find very beautiful when he talks about the life of Pythagoras. He says the following. Health of the body, virtue of the soul, purity of the intellect and
the rise of our true principles. Our true purposes, our true human ideals. And here he has a health recipe That encompasses what I told you and many other recipes that I have already told you. And I will tell you that this recipe is a very important one. It is a very important one because it is a very important and very important recipe and many other recipes that medicine can give, For example, for the health of the body, that psychiatry can give for mental health. That is, it encompasses a set of needs so that we do
not lose balance and harmony, which is synonymous with health. Health is a state of harmony and balance. So is Ayurveda, Indian medicine, Chinese medicine, medicine from the time of the Renaissance. So it was for many people in history. The disease is the result of the conflict between mind, soul and body. Mental and spiritual efforts are necessary for healing. And this is what Dr. Edward Ba, founder and creator of the Floral Therapy of Ba. I repeat, He did not want to say, as I do not believe, that this eliminates and you are doing a specific treatment.
As a psychiatrist, as a psychologist. But when the lucidity comes, work to deactivate the triggers. And to deactivate the triggers, remember these advice. Try to reconcile the conflict between mind, soul and body. Carl Gustav Jung, father of analytical psychology, used to say an expression that I like too much. Body and mind together, all the time. If you follow the advice of Dr. Edward Ba, put body, mind and soul together. Soul is that subtle plane without any theological. It is that subtle plane Where your values and virtues reside. Your life principles. That plane of ideas where
your life goals reside. Your human purposes. Body, mind and soul together, always. There is no vacuum, there is no imbalance. And if it has already been generated, this imbalance, it will be re-adjusted. Align again, body, mind and soul. The human purpose Sought by philosophy has the capacity to unify inside and outside. That is, restore our internal health and also help restore the social health of the world. The more inside, the more outside, says philosophy. And that's how it really works. To conclude, we have already advanced in our time, I brought only two sentences. This is
the concept of happiness that I have seen in my life. It belongs to Epictetus. In the manual of the epictetian philosopher Enchiridion, he says this. Happiness is a verb. It is the continuous, dynamic and permanent performance of acts of value. Our life is built at every moment and is useful for us and for the people we touch. It is a verb. It is under every step you take when you act as a human being. And it is a powerful antithesis to the gaps through which elements that disajust our internal harmony enter. And finally, this phrase
also by the Spanish philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno. The roots of the trees With the waters of the sky dream. If the roots of the trees that are there, deep inside the earth, cry for the waters of the sky, are the human roots not crying for the answers that come from the sky? From this plane of ideas, from this spiritual plane that are exactly values, virtues and wisdom? Aren't they from these waters that they need? When a plant gets sick, you can say, there was no rain. When a human being gets sick, there are
no waters of the sky. Now, there is a specific therapy because the problem has already been installed. But, is it also not necessary to provide for the waters of the sky to come And overcome the vacuum they left? I believe so. And this is the contribution that I think is quite current and quite necessary of philosophy for the promotion of mental health. Thank you.
