A Conversation with Socrates

OK. Here I go. Hows this for pressure. Inspired by the Athens spring and its immortal stones, I am drafting a little story. Its a draft, and I dont know how much I'll write while I'm in Greece. But here goes. Its just a beginnning. And a draft. I will post other things before I add to it, but I just wanted to putit out there for your amusement and my inspiration.

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Great cities have a powerful effect on the imagination. If the light is right and the modern sounds don’t interfere, you will find yourself face to face with the past—and the people who lived it. As you walk in the shadows of the Acropolis and in the shade of pine trees and palm trees, the breezes whisper to you…and you hear voices…


A Conversation with Socrates

It was another glorious spring day in Athens, a perfect days for a stroll among the magnificent ruins. As I turned the corner and looked up, I saw the north side of the Acropolis walls looming. The sun was low in the sky and a golden tint began to infuse the sacred rock. I was trying to make out the details of some structures, when a voice cried out. “Kon-stan-ti-ne”. Who is that? “Yiasou Konstantine” an old man greeted me again. He looked vaguely familiar, something about him, the voice maybe, remineded me of my beloved grandfather whose name I shared, but he was long gone. As he finally reached me, with his hand on my shoulder, I looked at his features and wondered if he was one of my father’s uncles, but they too had passed away long ago. But he was very familiar. Yes, a bit like my dear Theio Vasso. And his features were very distinct—you can’t forget someone like that, with clear eyes and commanding voice, a short, stocky man with face like a satyr—I wouldn't but some might call him ugly with wide-set, bulging eye, a flat, upturned nose with flaring nostrils and large fleshy lips like an ass. How could I possibly forget such a… Jesus Christ, its was Socrates! Not my uncle Socrates. I don’t have an uncle Socrates. THE Socrates. Drank the hemlock and bade the sorry world farewell Socrates.

Socrates.

He was dressed like a modern old man with baggy pants and a flannel shirt. His beaten up belt pulled tight around a belly that has perhaps been better fed recently than he was used too. He had enemies, but good friends too who looked after him. Apparently the symposia served more than just wine. “You are a little surprised eh?” he mumbled, catching his breath. I was embarrassed that such a man would exert himself to say hello to me…wait a minute! What’s going on here? “Let me explain” he said. Don’t be alarmed. And don’t worry about these others. I dress in modern garb to keep away tourists and priests. The latter are always trying to tell me about Christ. In my state, I know Yeshua better than they do. Anyway, ideas are immortal. And everything is connected. If you think intensely long enough about something, you will knock on the doors of the divine realm where those ideas live, and you will encounter those who are associated with those ideas. Whether they are men or gods.”

“What gods?” I asked. “Do you know the gods…is there a God.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at me “of course I know the gods. Don’t you?” “Amerikanaki eimai den xero tipota—I’m an American, I don’t know anything” –my standard joke with Greeks. “I’m not just a Greek—my country is the whole world. Your cousin Dante was quoting me.” My head was beginning to spin and the old man was sympathetic.
I looked at him closely to see if he looked like anyone else I knew. Who would play this kind of joke. “Its not a joke,” he said. Stunned, I said “if you can read my mind then this is a dream..” “Not a dream in the sense you are thinking” he replied, but we’ll talk about that later. “Entaxi—OK, I’ll knock off the mind reading.” “Efxaristo. And thank God you speak modern Greek.” “Ah yes,” he said. “We were talking about God.

“I don’t know. I’m not a philosopher, though I like reading philosophy.” “I know that you are not a philosopher. I won’t hold that against you.. In fact, it’s a plus. As you know, I held the rest of Athens’ men of wisdom in low regard. I too don’t know anything –I like your Amerikanaki line—but in life and in death, I have some good perspectives.”

“When you die”, he said with seriousness, “you see some things more clearly, for better or worse. The vision or feeling of the oneness of everything that some people attain through prayer or meditation comes easily. The world is One. The Universe is One. Everything comes from the One. That much is clear, but what that fact means for us is still a mystery even to me, even now. You stumbled on the truth that we philosophers don’t always say what we mean. I was the object lesson. Don’t kid yourself, hemlock is no treat. Five minutes after the moment that David captured in that romantic painting I was dead, dead dead and that sucked. And then… I don’t fully recall what came next, but here I am. And there I was in 1600, and there I will be in 2020. I really don’t know how it works, but I’m no longer bound by space and time. Anyway, Plato learned his lesson and he disguised some brilliant ideas as myths. Aristotle told jokes (they still don’t get them) and he was right to flee Athens after Alexander’s death. He ‘generously’ spared the Athenians the temptation to sin against philosophy a second time.”

I took some deep breaths. We started climbing the steps higher up the acropolis. The sun sank lower and the little valley that formed the site of the agora turned a dark green and the ruins scattered here are there were like golden flames. “What was your relationship with the Olympian deities,” I questioned him. “We were good buddies. I was on the best of terms with them because they were pure intelligences. They didn't B.S. me. Yes, they could be wise guys and nasty fellows but not as bad as the poets who slandered them said they were. Justice was a big deal on Olympus. If you pissed off the gods, you had big problems. Actually, I don’t really know what to make of them. You know in Greek their names corresponded to the planets and some saw them as the spirits that move the planets. For me the gods represent not just the forces and the powers of nature but also the laws of nature, and that includes the moral laws. The universe wants you to be good. Whether they care about your happiness is another story."

April 13

My head was spinning. Both because of the topic and because of who I was speaking with. Continuously on guard against sounding totally stupid, wonderful how dumb I've seemed so far, I asked a question that could have removed all doubt. "I noticed, Socrates, that you are not using what we now call the Socratic method." "Yes, that seems to disappoint people and there are two reasons for that. One is that I myself was part of the exercise and I was examining my own thoughts, seeing how far I could go with some ideas. For some things I no longer have to do that: the dead "feel" the connectedness of everything, but as I said, we don't know their meaning right away. The second reason is that you are my friend and it's not my intention to try to trip you up as with my 5th century enemies." "And I guess that since I'm channeling you I'm calling the shots", I said, immediately regretting my words. "By no means are you in charge here. And you are not channelling me. This is no "New Age" happening. All things and beings consists of patterns, the Forms I taught Plato about in some respects. Individual minds have patterns and the thoughts within them have patterns and the patterns that match are connected across space and time. Plato's timeless realm. Its like a google search on your newfangled computers: you type words that are put in the "form" of strings of 1's and 0's and the system matches them with similar or identical strings.

When I say Plato, I mean his published dialogues because the words he put in my mouth are not always my final views of things. So when people like you think intensely about things I said, I sense that and can choose to have a conversation with you. Now, we were talking abouts Gods." "Umm, yes," I stammered, proceeding to do what I often do with friends and strangers, fill the air with the sounds of my own voice. "We were wondering whether the gods or God or whatever is out there cares about us or not. What seems to me, Socrates, is that there are three questions for skeptics. Three steps, three levels of questions. First, is the universe a mind. Is the universe as a whole a conscious thing. Second, is that mind aware of us. Third, if it knows us, does it care about you and me." "It cares about me," he chuckled. I interrupted again. "it seems to me that a lot of the stuff physicists have come up with the past 50 years suggest the universe is mind-like. Like the epxeriments that show that whe two electrons that have some kind of relationship as sent shooting off in opposite directions, even to opposite ends of the universe, they are still in instantaneous communication with each other. One is aware of what happens to the other in a faster-than-light way. My intuition is that its because the two electrons exist in one mind and that mind sees them both simultaneously," I burst out. I had to catch my breath. Socrates, though catching my drift, simply said "that's interesting." He then turned away and stared into space, as he often did when he was alive. "Are you meditating on what I just said," I asked, quickly feeling foolish again. "Eh, oh no Konstantine, I was looking into that yard where they are barbequing some nice steak and I was trying to remember what good beef smelled like and tasted like. Darn it. When it comes to the senses, we departed are all memories."

"As for your three questions, yes they are good beginning to a discussion about God." To the first two, I agree with you. The universe does seem mindlike and we'll talk some of the things I discussed with Plato in a little while. At this point lets say that if "nous" or mind penetrates the whole world, then it is aware of everything. That's waht a mind does, its aware of things. An infinite mind would know all, at all levels because my friend Mr. Georg Cantor whowed us there are levels of infinity. Now, does this infinite mind care about us? I don't know. The Buddhists seem to say "no", that everything in our world is an illusion, including our individuality, which you moderns seem to value above all elese, but does that mean that we and the universe are ultimately meaningless? I don't know that either, but something can be an illusion in two senses: it can be a misrepresentation of reality, a mirage, or it could have value but hides a deeper level.

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