Translation:True History of the Profound Mexico/7
6. THE CLASSICAL OR SPLENDOR PERIOD.
It is truly painful to Mexicans, that after five centuries, just as the 16th century conquerors, we have not cared about knowing, studying and disseminating the ancient Mexico philosophical thought. As it has been noted, the Anahuac developed one of the six oldest civilizations in the world and which achieved the highest degree of human development for all the people. This begs the question of why?, if China and India, which are as old as the Anahuac civilizations, had a philosophy that guided, explained and gave meaning and continuity to their evolution, ours, according to researchers, lacked a philosophical thought which could sustain a Cultural development process, as long and ancient as other mother civilizations of the world. The myth that our old grandparents were idolaters’ farmers, that conducted bloody ceremonies to the Sun, water and wind, is just a product of the colonizing minds, which refused and continue to deny, any value to the invaded civilization.
Each of the World´s "Mother" civilizations, have had to develop, after satisfying their basic subsistence needs, a set of very elaborate and complex ideas, explaining life origin, the world and the human being; its reason for existence and to respond to what happens after death, (the ontological problem of being). This thought structure, which seeks to address three basic questions of every conscious human being and all developed people need to respond, "who am I, where I come from and where am I going", is the base where other knowledge is based, both material as well as spiritual, which give direction and meaning to existence.
Each civilization with autonomous origin, among other things, had a philosophy, a religion, a teacher, a basic grain as staple food and an aesthetic language. While some had Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism; we have the Toltecáyotl, the philosophical thought of ancient Mexico. If other civilizations had Zoroaster, Hermes, Akhenaten and based their power on wheat, rice or potatoes; we had Quetzalcoatl and maize.
The Greco-Roman civilization ruins "talk to us" because we know their thinkers, philosophers and poets. The stones of the "ruins" and the objects that are in our museums, can "talk" conveying their wisdom, in as long as we know the line of thought that conceived it; in addition to just having an "aesthetic or touristic" value, becoming something alive, current and vibrant.
The elevated abstraction of philosophical thought is materialized in stone, clay or metal and the Intangible Cultural Heritage; so that we cannot accept the existence of our old grandparents, without a philosophical thought, firm and fixed and permanent in our traditions and customs. It becomes an urgent challenge enter the third millennium with the knowledge of the philosophy of our old grandfathers.
“TOLTECÁYOTL, CONSCIOUSNESS OF A CULTURAL HERITAGE.
I shall look through the texts and other pre-Columbian Nahua testimonies, in the consciousness the Mesoamerican men had of being the bearer of a great legacy. And I will add that, far from wanting to develop a scholarly and static remembrance, when searching in Nahuatl sources, I also look for significant hints and ideas for us, that at the same time are capable of enriching the foundations of our own cultural heritage." (Miguel Leon Portilla. 1980)
The greatest splendor period of ancient Mexico was the so-called classical period that approximately comprises de period between 200 BCE to 850 CE. More than a thousand years of a surprising and continuous process of human and social growth. In this period philosophy, wisdom and science, reached its maximum development. The large knowledge centers led by Teotihuacan achieved their peak. Social life found a perfect balance between meeting the material subsistence needs and the needs of transcendental existence. Art has been the best testimony of this luminous period.
If the basis of human development occurred with the Olmecs in the preclassical period, the upper vertex of the cultural development of ancient Mexico was reached during the classical period. It covered more than a thousand years of impressive humanist progress in the Anahuac. All “Mother” world civilizations sought in the apogee of their development the spiritual significance of the existence. Ancient Mexicans were not the exception. Their knowledge of the human spirit, of the world conception as energy fields, of the micro—cosmos and macro—cosmos relationship and of the responsibility of “humanizing and balancing” interaction between nature and cosmos, is striking and astonishing.
These one thousand splendor years are fundamental to explain what "Mexicans" or rather anahuacas, are today. We need to deeply know by ourselves, this luminous period. Make our own conjectures with our own values; leave behind the vision of the foreign colonizer.
Middle ages Europeans sought inspiration in their past to build a bridge to take them out of the dark ages. The question is, why we cannot, likewise look for a past source of inspiration from the values, principles and attitudes created by our old grandparents, to reach the evolution and cultural development zenith. And with these values design and build the future. An “own future”.
Currently we do not know the outreach of their energy and spiritual achievements, but the truth is that the ruinous material vestiges of their development leave us breathless and exalt our spirit. While visiting Teotihuacan, for example, we can’t help thinking about their intangible achievements, while facing their impressive matter handling. If their knowledge pyramid was aimed at attaining spiritual consciousness and its significance, when we reflect with an uncolonized mind at the top of the Sun pyramid, we must think about the scope and achievements that they must have had on the intangible level of knowledge, especially in the field of energy.
When the conception of our old grandparents is decolonized, despite denial and destruction of their knowledge, we shall understand that they remain alive in our hearts. That the Anahuac civilization is not dead, as has been preached by colonizers for the last five centuries. And that we all are their continuation in cyclic time.