Once upon a time and an extraordinary time it was, there lived in Athens a man famous for his wisdom. His name was Socrates. If stories are to be believed, he was ugly and unkempt. He wore shabby clothes and much like Indian rishis, went about barefoot. He had a shrew of a wife who henpecked him and made his life a living hell. Partly because of this domestic angst, he learnt to bear and forbear and to face life with fortitude. So great was his capacity to bear adversity that he went about in ordinary clothes and bare feet even when all the strong and healthy people around him were shivering with cold. He was absent minded and erratic (as a philosopher should be). The highest ‘good’ for Socrates was a transparent, unsullied mind that could see with absolute clarity into truth. He was unperturbed by the vagaries of life. In short, he was a sage, a rishi. Socrates was known for his ‘odd’ ways. Often he would be lost in thought trying to untie the intricacies of a philosophic problem that vexed him. On one such occasion, He stood rooted to a spot for such a long time that word spread through the streets of Athens. a People poured into the streets to look at Socrates frozen into a statue. Some of them brought out their mats and camped around him just to see when he would move. Socrates stood all night and the next morning he shook himself up and left the place as if nothing unusual had happened. It’s hard to say whether Socrates had experienced the super conscious state or Samadhi.
Having learnt the mysteries of life the hard way, Socrates took to teaching the young. He was too other worldly to take a tuition fee. Plato was his most famous pupil. If Plato’s oeuvre is anything to go by, Socrates must have been a man of extraordinary genius and character. A thinker of Plato’s caliber couldn't have felt such reverence for an ordinary man. At about the age of seventy, Socrates was tried and condemned to death for ‘corrupting the young’ among other things. He was probably tried by men who were far inferior to him in intelligence and moral integrity. Socrates chose to represent himself at the trial and when sentenced, suggested such a paltry penalty that he infuriated the judges. It’s been said that death meant nothing to him. It was a case of mind or soul over matter.
He didn't care if the body stayed or fell. Further, he went on to assert that it wasn't in the power of the judges to punish or kill him. His soul was immortal:
‘…if you kill such a one as I am, you will injure yourselves more than you injure me…for a bad man is not permitted to injure a (man) better than himself…the evil of unjustly taking away the life of another- is greater far (than being put to death)...those of us who think death is an evil are in error. For either death is a dreamless sleep- which is plainly good- or the soul migrates to another world. And ‘what would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die and die again.’(1)
The reference to reincarnation is interesting. Socrates calmly drank the cup of hemlock brought to him and died consoling his distraught disciples. He brings to life the ideal of right living and dying regardless of consequences.
Pic: www.biography.com
1.Russell, Bertrand, History of Western Philosophy
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