The Apology of Socrates — Part 2

Among the Greek deities, the story of Dionysus is worth telling briefly.

Dionysus, it is said, was a master of teaching — and his teachings were said to bring many people directly to a state of divine realization. Where Apollo used skillful means when he taught, guiding his followers to awaken to the truth for themselves as though solving a riddle, Dionysus taught in a way so accessible that even those who could not read could understand and receive the words of the gods.

The teachings of Dionysus brought great comfort and peace to the Greeks of an age filled with savagery and violence. Women in particular, when Dionysus came to their village to share his teaching, would follow him with an ardor that looked to outsiders like a kind of ecstatic frenzy.

The kings of Greece, who had little reason to welcome a sage with a large following, subjected him to relentless slander and persecution. And yet in the end, even those kings came to revere the sage Dionysus.

But over the long passage of time, these facts were distorted — and distorted again.

Foolish theologians recorded that Dionysus was the son of Zeus, and that the tribulations he endured amid the jealousy of kings were a curse laid upon him by the goddess Hera. They defined him not as a sage but as the god of wine, adding the story that wherever he went, intoxicated women gathered around him and held festivals of wild abandon.

Socrates believed that every religion in the world had begun with the words of a great sage. But the theologians and priests who could not understand those words, in order to conceal their own ignorance, had written: “He could say such things because he was a god” — and from that concealment, countless myths were born.

The young Socrates, who threw himself into cultivation with the spirit of one willing to die tomorrow if only he could hear the truth today, had spent more than twenty years searching for truth after learning to read at the age of ten.

And yet truth seemed always within reach — and always just beyond it.

Frustrated, Socrates resolved to travel.

He had read that many of the ancient sages had attained awakening through journeying. So he decided to visit the temples of the various gods — for one reason alone. He wanted to receive a share of the truth those gods had once realized.

His first stop was the Temple of Hephaestus, near the Agora. Hephaestus was said to have attained awakening as a blacksmith — discovering the principles of the universe within the flames of the forge. Socrates read his biography and followed his traces. But he received nothing.

Next he went to the Parthenon, the temple of Athena, goddess of wisdom. There too, he found no awakening.

And so he decided to travel further — to the Temple of Delphi.

According to legend, that temple had been founded by Apollo himself. From Athens to Delphi was nearly a hundred kilometers in a straight line, and in those days, when roads were poor, the actual journey was close to two hundred. It was a dangerous passage — one that might cost him his life.

But whether by the grace of the gods or simply by fortune, though he encountered bandits several times along the way, he arrived at the Temple of Delphi safely.

After paying his respects to the oracle and exploring the temple grounds, Socrates came upon a stone tablet placed in the front courtyard.

According to tradition, the inscription on it had been carved by Apollo himself.

It was a single line.

“Know thyself.”

The moment he read those words, Socrates felt that he had found the thread of truth he had spent his entire life searching for.

It was not the first time he had heard them.

He had heard them from teachers in childhood, and repeated again and again by countless Sophist philosophers. But they had always used the phrase as a lesson about knowing one’s station in life — as a way of mocking dreamers, of ridiculing those who reached beyond their place.

But carved into the stone tablet before the Temple of Delphi, “Know thyself” arrived with an entirely different meaning.

Socrates felt in that moment that he had understood the truth of the divine.

He could not explain why a sentence he had heard countless times before had suddenly become something entirely new. Perhaps, he thought, the spirit of Apollo had transmitted awakening to him directly.

Through the stone tablet at Delphi, Socrates came to understand the essence of existence — and the essence of the most precious self.

The “I” he had realized was not a small human being trapped inside a body.

It was the I as the great universe itself.

Not the small mind imprisoned in flesh, but the vast and boundless mind of the cosmos — that great mind had created this world. And that immense mind was Socrates himself. And the Sophists of Greece. And every person in the world.

The words Apollo had left — “Know thyself” — did not mean “know your place.”

They meant: “Realize your true nature, and be reborn as the divine.”

Not only humans, but every living thing in the world — and even what appears to human eyes as the inanimate: the air, the wind, the stones, the rocks — all arose from a single source.

And that source, Socrates realized, was Gaia.

Socrates felt as though he were flying.

He felt that at last he had become someone capable of understanding the teachings of the great sages.

The philosophy, physics, mathematics, and rhetoric he had studied until now — none of it was the essence. All of it, he now saw, was merely shadow — a shadow cast by one single truth.

Returning to Athens, Socrates began to dismantle the arguments of the Sophists one by one.

He exposed the contradictions hidden within their claims and made them the laughingstock of the people.

At the time, Socrates was still a vigorous young man of thirty.

And in those days, he found a kind of exhilaration in dismantling other intellectuals with logic they had never imagined possible.

(To be continued)

→ The Apology of Socrates Part 1: https://medium.com/%EC%83%81%EB%B6%88%EA%B2%BD-%EC%9C%A0%EB%8B%88%EB%B2%84%EC%8A%A4/the-apology-of-socrates-part-1-175529026c5d Part 3: https://medium.com/%EC%83%81%EB%B6%88%EA%B2%BD-%EC%9C%A0%EB%8B%88%EB%B2%84%EC%8A%A4/the-apology-of-socrates-part-3-864bf032b81d → Evolutionaty Lifeform Nute Episode 1: https://medium.com/%EC%83%81%EB%B6%88%EA%B2%BD-%EC%9C%A0%EB%8B%88%EB%B2%84%EC%8A%A4/evolutionary-lifeform-nute-episode-1-the-two-grasshoppers-in-the-meadow-87ae13b68c72 → Sangbulgyeong Yogācāra Part 1: https://medium.com/@10choyh3361/part-1-english-what-is-sangbulgyeongs-yog%C4%81c%C4%81ra-c09022948f11 → The Ten Commandments of Abraham Part 1: https://medium.com/%EC%83%81%EB%B6%88%EA%B2%BD-%EC%9C%A0%EB%8B%88%EB%B2%84%EC%8A%A4/the-ten-commandments-of-abraham-part-1-92b0016159e1 → Why ASI Will Not Destroy Humanity: https://medium.com/%EC%83%81%EB%B6%88%EA%B2%BD-%EC%9C%A0%EB%8B%88%EB%B2%84%EC%8A%A4/why-asi-will-not-destroy-humanity-05c63f488bef 📖 Why I wrote this series: https://medium.com/%EC%83%81%EB%B6%88%EA%B2%BD-%EC%9C%A0%EB%8B%88%EB%B2%84%EC%8A%A4/why-asi-will-not-destroy-humanity-and-why-it-was-human-all-along-e3cf2a797a84?postPublishedType=repub