Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Some Childlike Notes on Socrates and Wisdom
I believe that Socrates was not a philosopher as most people today might imagine, but a master, mystic, shaman, or sage. In other words, he was enlightened. He was wise.
I know that these days, enlightenment and wisdom are regarded as silly and fanciful notions, but only on the surface. I think deep down people still regard them as important and real. It explains why most college students are bored out of their minds in college philosophy courses. Though many are overcoming it, or have never succumbed to it fully in the first place, it still stands that the prevailing intellectual fashion in most college philosophy departments these days is that of postmodernism. They say there is no such thing as absolute truth or certain knowledge, and they even go to say that philosophy is dying, or already dead. Personally, I had one professor tell me he would be surprised if academic philosophy lasted another 5 years, yet would not be surprised if it survived as long as it served as a cash cow to help fund the staff and faculty.
This really upset me. Even more, I was upset at the whole manner in which philosophy was conducted at university. Rather, at the fact that it was not conducted! There was scholarship and professing of philosophy, but there was no actual philosophizing. It seemed bankrupt, inane, and wrong. It was like, as some here have often said, doing a cross world puzzle and feeling special about it. It was like being in a useless, insular club, some what like Mensa. I mean, come on! Bright folks coming together... to do absolutely nothing!
I then realized that perhaps my being upset was unwarranted. After all, maybe my ideals were too high. Rather, maybe they were too Christian, I thought. For I never heard of anyone outside of religions talking about absolute this or universal that, or Truth with a capital T. Was this all merely my deeply buried Christian upbringing rearing its ugly head? Was I looking for something that wasn't there? I certainly hoped I wasn't! After all, I took great pride in myself as being someone who no longer believed in the supernatural, metaphysical, and absolute. I was among the class of mature, modern men who knew better! Who knew there was only the natural, physical, and relative, who knew that there was no Truth, but "truths": uncertain, approximations, provisional, flimsy, descriptive, scientific.
But no. There was still something in me that said that there is Truth that we can be absolutely certain about, and yet not dogmatic or religious in the slightest about. For example, that of things: a thing must be what it is, and cannot be what it is not, or, A = A, and A =/= not A. Another example, that of constancy and change: that if every thing is always changing and never constant, then everything is never changing and always constant. Yet still, these seemed to have an uncertainty to them. Even more so, they seemed to be yet more mindless mind games, completely irrelevant and unrelated to the physical world, to my personal life, to anyone or anything. They were garbage to me. It would not be until later that I discovered that they were actually treasures! And so I went back to my normal life, more firm than ever in my erroneous belief that philosophy is pointless, and that I should stick to science and mathematics.
It was not until a few years later, in studying neuroscience and geometry, focusing on consciousness and invariance, that my philosophical side began to grow once more. I was overcoming materialism, naturalism, relativism, and postmodernism. I was yet again arriving at evidence and logic which pointed to a metaphysical world, yet again arriving at conclusions that were not just probable but undeniable. I could not stand it any longer, and plunged into my philosophical and even mystical side once more. I went down many pathways and luckily avoided many dangers and irrationalities, particularly the New Age, until at last I found what was called genuine philosophy, or perennial philosophy, or the sacred science. And to my surprise, there was nothing, not one bit, that was airy-fairy or irrational about it. Rather, it was my own misconceptions and misinterpretations that made it seem at all mysterious.
And yet, even when it was perfectly clear and made perfect sense, it was nonetheless like a whole new world to me! It was learning, sure, but it felt like an adventure! And so I followed that, with all the curiosity and passion I could muster, in a quest for excellence, in a pursuit of perfection, in a striving for enlightenment and wisdom, in a tremendous love for Truth and Reality. I eventually found that, as Mr. Quinn once put it, "The knowledge gained in enlightenment is a special kind of knowledge and is totally unlike all other forms of knowledge. One goes to the source of all knowledge, so to speak. It is a knowledge which embraces the uncertainty of utterly everything in the Universe and yet at the same time involves an absolute certainty which underpins and comprises this all-pervasive uncertainty. And it is this certainty behind the total uncertainty of everything which is timeless and the source of all wisdom. Socrates was once asked whether he knew himself and he replied, 'I don't know, but I know this 'don't know'.'"
I now spend much of my free time pursuing eternal truths and applying them to my life. I do not feel so competent as to teach yet, though I would now feel competent in and would love to simply discuss any sort of philosophical idea and even philosopher with any of you here. This website and forum have been a priceless aid in my advancement, and I hope I am able to someday give even a tenth back in return, some how, some way. I am not a new reader here, though I am a brand new regular poster here. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to what we can discover about each other and about this wonderful reality that makes up all our experiences!
(Edit: To make this more bloody and personal, I should add that much of my learning and transformation has come from challenging and painful life situations: an abusive childhood, relationships, hatreds, tyrannies, trivialities, pettiness, depression, anxiety, frustration, annoyance, boredom, fear... egodrama... all within me and within others... the suffering that comes with being ignorant, in short. And yet philosophy was not merely psychotherapy to me, though it certainly was that in my early stages of philosophizing, when I would have lofty thoughts and altered states now and then, but of which would only be "activated" in a personal sense at some later point in my life when some event triggered their importance. Of course, there was not only my psychological suffering, but also my spiritual suffering, the difference between the two I am not exactly sure how to properly explain as of yet.)
I believe that Socrates was not a philosopher as most people today might imagine, but a master, mystic, shaman, or sage. In other words, he was enlightened. He was wise.
I know that these days, enlightenment and wisdom are regarded as silly and fanciful notions, but only on the surface. I think deep down people still regard them as important and real. It explains why most college students are bored out of their minds in college philosophy courses. Though many are overcoming it, or have never succumbed to it fully in the first place, it still stands that the prevailing intellectual fashion in most college philosophy departments these days is that of postmodernism. They say there is no such thing as absolute truth or certain knowledge, and they even go to say that philosophy is dying, or already dead. Personally, I had one professor tell me he would be surprised if academic philosophy lasted another 5 years, yet would not be surprised if it survived as long as it served as a cash cow to help fund the staff and faculty.
This really upset me. Even more, I was upset at the whole manner in which philosophy was conducted at university. Rather, at the fact that it was not conducted! There was scholarship and professing of philosophy, but there was no actual philosophizing. It seemed bankrupt, inane, and wrong. It was like, as some here have often said, doing a cross world puzzle and feeling special about it. It was like being in a useless, insular club, some what like Mensa. I mean, come on! Bright folks coming together... to do absolutely nothing!
I then realized that perhaps my being upset was unwarranted. After all, maybe my ideals were too high. Rather, maybe they were too Christian, I thought. For I never heard of anyone outside of religions talking about absolute this or universal that, or Truth with a capital T. Was this all merely my deeply buried Christian upbringing rearing its ugly head? Was I looking for something that wasn't there? I certainly hoped I wasn't! After all, I took great pride in myself as being someone who no longer believed in the supernatural, metaphysical, and absolute. I was among the class of mature, modern men who knew better! Who knew there was only the natural, physical, and relative, who knew that there was no Truth, but "truths": uncertain, approximations, provisional, flimsy, descriptive, scientific.
But no. There was still something in me that said that there is Truth that we can be absolutely certain about, and yet not dogmatic or religious in the slightest about. For example, that of things: a thing must be what it is, and cannot be what it is not, or, A = A, and A =/= not A. Another example, that of constancy and change: that if every thing is always changing and never constant, then everything is never changing and always constant. Yet still, these seemed to have an uncertainty to them. Even more so, they seemed to be yet more mindless mind games, completely irrelevant and unrelated to the physical world, to my personal life, to anyone or anything. They were garbage to me. It would not be until later that I discovered that they were actually treasures! And so I went back to my normal life, more firm than ever in my erroneous belief that philosophy is pointless, and that I should stick to science and mathematics.
It was not until a few years later, in studying neuroscience and geometry, focusing on consciousness and invariance, that my philosophical side began to grow once more. I was overcoming materialism, naturalism, relativism, and postmodernism. I was yet again arriving at evidence and logic which pointed to a metaphysical world, yet again arriving at conclusions that were not just probable but undeniable. I could not stand it any longer, and plunged into my philosophical and even mystical side once more. I went down many pathways and luckily avoided many dangers and irrationalities, particularly the New Age, until at last I found what was called genuine philosophy, or perennial philosophy, or the sacred science. And to my surprise, there was nothing, not one bit, that was airy-fairy or irrational about it. Rather, it was my own misconceptions and misinterpretations that made it seem at all mysterious.
And yet, even when it was perfectly clear and made perfect sense, it was nonetheless like a whole new world to me! It was learning, sure, but it felt like an adventure! And so I followed that, with all the curiosity and passion I could muster, in a quest for excellence, in a pursuit of perfection, in a striving for enlightenment and wisdom, in a tremendous love for Truth and Reality. I eventually found that, as Mr. Quinn once put it, "The knowledge gained in enlightenment is a special kind of knowledge and is totally unlike all other forms of knowledge. One goes to the source of all knowledge, so to speak. It is a knowledge which embraces the uncertainty of utterly everything in the Universe and yet at the same time involves an absolute certainty which underpins and comprises this all-pervasive uncertainty. And it is this certainty behind the total uncertainty of everything which is timeless and the source of all wisdom. Socrates was once asked whether he knew himself and he replied, 'I don't know, but I know this 'don't know'.'"
I now spend much of my free time pursuing eternal truths and applying them to my life. I do not feel so competent as to teach yet, though I would now feel competent in and would love to simply discuss any sort of philosophical idea and even philosopher with any of you here. This website and forum have been a priceless aid in my advancement, and I hope I am able to someday give even a tenth back in return, some how, some way. I am not a new reader here, though I am a brand new regular poster here. Thanks for reading, and I look forward to what we can discover about each other and about this wonderful reality that makes up all our experiences!
(Edit: To make this more bloody and personal, I should add that much of my learning and transformation has come from challenging and painful life situations: an abusive childhood, relationships, hatreds, tyrannies, trivialities, pettiness, depression, anxiety, frustration, annoyance, boredom, fear... egodrama... all within me and within others... the suffering that comes with being ignorant, in short. And yet philosophy was not merely psychotherapy to me, though it certainly was that in my early stages of philosophizing, when I would have lofty thoughts and altered states now and then, but of which would only be "activated" in a personal sense at some later point in my life when some event triggered their importance. Of course, there was not only my psychological suffering, but also my spiritual suffering, the difference between the two I am not exactly sure how to properly explain as of yet.)
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SeekerOfWisdom
- Posts: 2336
- Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:23 pm
Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
It's very funny to see how similar we all are Getoriks :)
I went to Sydney university at the beginning of this year studying physics and philosophy as an elective only to discover how horrible formal education and academic philosophy were. After doing what you did, and being deeply interested in the sages and mysticism, I also came to profound understandings that made it very easy for me to quit uni. I now live nowhere but the moment and am in love with the wisdom of the sages. "Not-knowing" is one of the most important things to understand to achieve real wisdom in my opinion, which is obvious since almost all of the sages talked about it.
"I am the wises man alive for I know one thing and that is that I know nothing." -Socrates
"True knowledge is to not-know" - Lao Tzu
"True knowledge is to realize the extent of one's own ignorance" - Confucius
I hope you have had as much progression and realization as I've been subject too this past year, did you come to the same conclusion that reality is of a dream-like nature, that the universe is the stuff of consciousness and that you are only a witness to your thoughts and sensations?
You probably feel a sense of not being sure what to do yet with the knowledge you've gained?
I went to Sydney university at the beginning of this year studying physics and philosophy as an elective only to discover how horrible formal education and academic philosophy were. After doing what you did, and being deeply interested in the sages and mysticism, I also came to profound understandings that made it very easy for me to quit uni. I now live nowhere but the moment and am in love with the wisdom of the sages. "Not-knowing" is one of the most important things to understand to achieve real wisdom in my opinion, which is obvious since almost all of the sages talked about it.
"I am the wises man alive for I know one thing and that is that I know nothing." -Socrates
"True knowledge is to not-know" - Lao Tzu
"True knowledge is to realize the extent of one's own ignorance" - Confucius
I hope you have had as much progression and realization as I've been subject too this past year, did you come to the same conclusion that reality is of a dream-like nature, that the universe is the stuff of consciousness and that you are only a witness to your thoughts and sensations?
You probably feel a sense of not being sure what to do yet with the knowledge you've gained?
- Trevor Salyzyn
- Posts: 2420
- Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2005 12:52 pm
- Location: Canada
Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Our culture's reaction to wisdom is to lock up anyone with a lick of it. If you avoided the trap of academia, be wary of mental hospitals.
New Age is not nearly as big of a trap as you think it is, not compared to the very real threat of imprisonment you can encounter by giving any of its propositions the benefit of the doubt.
New Age is not nearly as big of a trap as you think it is, not compared to the very real threat of imprisonment you can encounter by giving any of its propositions the benefit of the doubt.
A mindful man needs few words.
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SeekerOfWisdom
- Posts: 2336
- Joined: Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:23 pm
Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Trevor there never was a genius without a tincture of madness;) people will defend against anything that goes against their beliefs, and the smart people usually go against the average beliefs.
- brad walker
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Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Getoriks, keep in mind: "Use a thorn to remove a thorn and throw both away", as some Eastern mystics say.
- Diebert van Rhijn
- Posts: 6469
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Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Then again our culture also locks up people who are a danger to themselves and their environment. I guess the common reaction is to isolate everything which could threaten public safety and coherence. But nobody ever managed to lock up wisdom as it sprouts up everywhere all of the time. It's when thinking one is the sole carrier and representative that it's indeed time to be locked up and calm down!Trevor Salyzyn wrote:Our culture's reaction to wisdom is to lock up anyone with a lick of it.
- brad walker
- Posts: 300
- Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2007 8:49 am
- Location: be an eye
Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Indeed, like a sapling in a crack of asphalt, wisdom cannot be contained even in a harsh environment. But why settle for a Desert of the Real? Manifest a non-fatalistic Destiny. I have heard scouting reports of a Fertile Crescent where wisdom may flourish. There are countless unclaimed parcels of land to be homestead by many workers who till, fertilize and water the soil, weed out bad seeds, scare or eradicate pests, harvest the bounty and manage pesky neighbors. In such a Wisdom Rush there will undoubtedly be many events some find distasteful. That's History.Diebert van Rhijn wrote:But nobody ever managed to lock up wisdom as it sprouts up everywhere all of the time.
Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Thank you. I still have much to learn. This is new to me. I feel like a very young child. I feel as if I have realized the reality of my spiritual body which has since now been atrophied. I can barely move and barely even see.
But really, all I am talking about is my recent return to being conscious of the fact that I am not separate from Infinity, and my struggle to overcome my all too often and all too easy habit of slipping back into finitude.
But really, all I am talking about is my recent return to being conscious of the fact that I am not separate from Infinity, and my struggle to overcome my all too often and all too easy habit of slipping back into finitude.
- Diebert van Rhijn
- Posts: 6469
- Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2005 4:43 pm
Re: Some childlike notes on Socrates and Sophia
Thanks for the posts Getoriks. Try to post some more on any topic you might gravitate to. For me writing here and other places when they present themselves helped me perhaps even more so than all the reading. It challenges in different ways. Although both are still insignificant to the whole process like you have described earlier well enough.