…to see. I mean, I was amazed, for example, to find this in Plato. There's a description, it's in the Phaedrus, where Socrates says, they're talking about the ideal world, and Socrates says, the very pebbles of the road and the mountain of the rock…

…to find this in Plato. There's a description, it's in the Phaedrus, where Socrates says, they're talking about the ideal world, and Socrates says, the very pebbles of the road and the mountain of the rock are made of the same material as the precious…

…I mean, this has been from earliest times one of the great religious and philosophical commandments. I mean, this was what Socrates learned from the oracle, know thyself. And we will find this again and again within all the great world religions, the…

…I mean, this... has been, from earliest times, one of the great religious and philosophical commandments. I mean, this was what Socrates learned from the oracle, know thyself. And you will find this again and again within all the great world religions, the…

…a text as I've been quoting, a really practical method whereby we can put into practice the advice which the oracle gave to Socrates in which he was never tired of passing on to his fellows, know thyself. Well, in relation to the value for creativity…

…made at the expense of the individuals who made them. After all, we merely have to look back to see what happened to Socrates and what happened to Jesus to realize how extremely dangerous it is for somebody to try to transcend the limitations of the…

…made at the expense of the individuals who made them. After all, we merely have to look back to see what happened to Socrates and what happened to Jesus to realize how extremely dangerous it is for somebody to try to transcend the limitations of the…

…a passage from Plato, which I think throws a lot of light on this subject. It comes from the Phaidon, the dialogue. Here, Socrates is talking about the ideal world. which he says is more beautiful and real than the actual world in which we live. And…

…of mental efficiency. And this whole matter of increasing awareness, I think, is of great importance. After all, from the time of Socrates we've been saying, know thyself. But like so many ideals, we formulate the ideal, but we provide no means whereby it…

…interest in precious stones is given, curiously enough, in one of the dialogues of Plato in the Phaedo, I think it is, where Socrates is speaking about the ideal world. After all, this is one of the basic metaphysical ideas of Plato, that there is an…

…basic metaphysical ideas of Plato, that there is an ideal world of which our world is in a sense a rather bad copy. And Socrates, when he's talking about the ideal world, has this to say. He says that there is this ideal world beyond and above the…

…In other words, we have to obey the old Socratic maxim, and it was a very old maxim even in the time of Socrates, the maxim, know thyself. Now, Before we go any further in discussing positive ways of knowing ourselves, let us briefly consider what are…

…just a divine being of some kind, just an anonymous god. And the daimon idea, of course, comes right down into classical Greece. Socrates' monitions, the little voice that he heard telling him to avoid doing things that he ought not to do, was the voice…

…he ought not to do, was the voice of a daimon, a divine being. And it's very interesting to hear what Socrates has to say about these interventions, these irrational interventions coming from what we should call below the threshold of consciousness. He…

…madness of the orgiastic catharsis the poetic madness and the erotic madness. These are the three, four beneficent madnesses of which Socrates is talking here. And as I say, Homer treats all these irrational parts of our nature, all the things that we…

…I suppose, about 800 BC. But about 400 years later, we find that the current notion is entirely different. We find in Socrates and Plato that it's completely self-evident that man has a unitary soul and that this soul is detachable and can survive the…

…prison. It was just part of the personality. But the result is that with the sort of canonization of these ideas by Socrates and Plato, we get a the beginnings of this dualism which then becomes systematized and made scientific very late on by Descartes…

…the rather abstract metaphysical problems which he was engaged upon. And one can say something of the same kind in relation to Socrates, who, if you remember, said that he saw no object in going outside the city walls because everything of interest was…

…with men. But after all, men do have to live on the soil and live in community with nature. And again, one wonders whether Socrates wouldn't have done more good to his fellows if he had paid a little more attention to what went on outside the city…

…how does an electrochemical event in the brain transform itself into the perception of say a quartet by Haydn or a thought about Socrates we haven't the faintest idea this is just a fact which we have to accept and we don't know and it's the same…