Introduction

Socrates was born in 470 BCE and was executed in 399 BCE for "impiety and corrupting the morals of the young". We have seen that interpretations of Pythagoras and Heraclitus as jnani Masters, and hence as lost buddhas, are at the very least consistent with known facts, and in the case of Heraclitus can be argued in some detail from his Fragments. Socrates is a different case however, because on the one hand we have an abundance of written material, from Plato and from Xenophobe, while on the other hand an authentic Socrates is much harder to retrieve from it. What is attempted here is a kind of "spiritual archaeology" using our buddha-archetype as a template to lay over the historical material. The problem lies with the characters of Plato and Xenophon, — in the first case we have a literary and philosophical genius whose "record" of the life and sayings of Socrates are clearly a loose interpretation, while in the second case we have a reliable historian with a maddening habit of drawing a veil over just the moments we are most interested in: Socrates' thought as expressed in dialogue.

The obvious question, why are we not considering Plato himself as a "lost buddha", needs answering first of all. Plato is often referred to as "divine" and is a central figure in the Neoplatonist tradition, a Western jnani tradition that runs as an intertwining of spiritual influences with the development of Christianity. Yet an immersion in the Platonic oeuvre reveals the mind of a philosopher (in the modern sense) not a jnani, moreover a philosopher with a strong literary emphasis, as has his much more recent heir, Nietzsche. A detailed argument, drawing on a wide reading of the dialogues is required, but for now all that can be said is that the evidence in the Republic and Laws point to a mind engaged with questions of society and not with questions of transcendence. Karl Popper has also argued that the Republic is fascist in its conception, and there is also a eugenicist thinking to be found in it. It is also clear that in Laws Plato comes up with legislation that would have convicted any man like Socrates, an irony considering that it was the execution of Socrates by the state of Athens that made Plato so distrustful of the new democracy and led him to formulate Laws.

Nevertheless, all that is transcendent in Socrates' thought comes to us via Plato, and it is Plato's vivid literary gifts in the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, and the Symposium that have immortalised Socrates as martyr, and planted in our minds the analogies with Christ and Mansur.

S. Abhayananda, in his History of Mysticism is quite certain of Socrates as spiritual genius, and even mentions evidence in Aristoxenus (c. 330 BC) that Socrates met a number of Brahmins in the Athens of his day. His discussion has some similarities with that presented here, but his starting point is an inner conviction:

To many, the figure of Socrates remains a mystery, but to the knowers of God, his teaching and manner of his life are clear as crystal, and he is dearly beloved; for only those who have trod the same path and realized the same Truth can know how pure was his soul and how wonderful his task in life and death. (History of Mysticism, p. 99)

Plato

The gifts of Plato have brought Socrates alive for us, but at the same time it can be argued that Plato, as a highly intelligent and self-motivated man, had his own agenda. Put simply, we need to be aware that in many of the so-called Socratic dialogues we are not reading about a recorded historical event, but an invention of Plato to fit his purpose. At times his purpose may well have been to illuminate Socrates' admittedly obscure and contradictory sayings to the very best of his abilities, but we must often suspect, particularly with the later dialogues, that Plato had long forgotten such an intention, and is simply putting words into his Master's mouth. One clue that supports this view is that Plato is almost never present in these dialogues, whereas the more simple-minded Xenophon uses no such sophistry. One could interpret Plato's absence as modesty, and indeed he has set the tone for much polemic writing through Western history, including Nietzsche's Zarathustra, but with this device he removes much contextual detail that would convince us of his intentions. Our method here, as already stated, is to lay the Buddha-archetype as template over the collected works, and see what emerges as a portrait of a man rather than an analysis of his doctrines. The results can be summed up as follows: we find that in some places Socrates emerges as a first-order jnani Master operating as clearly as the Buddha did, and using many similar devices, whereas in other places Socrates is putting forward ideas that are quite improbable for a Buddha of whatever personality. We have mentioned these, for example the fascist and eugenicist ideas in the Republic.

However the most implausible element is the one best known in the West as Socrates' chief legacy, the "Socratic dialogue". Plato has managed to convince us that the Socratic method was based on reasoned argument or dialectic, reaching knowledge unattainable through other methods. On closer examination however we find that the leaps in logic and gulfs of assumption create nothing like a reasoned argument but an entirely manipulative process of convincing the participant of the intended, though initially unstated, view of Socrates (or is it Plato?). A clue to nature of these dialogues is a complaint by Meno that Socrates has numbed his lips and mind, as though Socrates was a stingray. The Pali canon reveals the Buddha operating in a similar way, by pursuing a line of argument that has at its root little logic, or even blatant contradiction and paradox, until the fortunate victim almost groans that they are "numbed" and certainly defeated. Plato may have used this device of the apparently rational dialogue in his later work to argue certain of his own agendas, but the jnani Master uses the device for quite different reasons, and they have little to do with demonstrating the validity of the proposition under debate. The mental "numbness" is just another way of saying that the discursive intellect is brought to silence, at which point the real work of the Master begins: to slip into the heart of the disciple.

So is there evidence that Socrates had made his way into the hearts of his disciples? We will let an unlikely character, the future king and tyrant Alcibiades, tell us just how powerfully this "stingray" operated (we note that historically Socrates is remembered as a gadfly rather than a stingray):

I swear by all the gods in heaven that for anything that had happened between us when I got up after sleeping with Socrates, I might have been sleeping with my father or elder brother. ... On the one hand I realized that I had been slighted, but on the other I felt a reverence for Socrates' character, his self-control and courage; I had met a man whose like for wisdom and fortitude I could never have expected to encounter.
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Whenever I listen to him my heart beats faster than if I were in a religious frenzy, and tears run down my face, and I observe that numbers of other people have the same experience.
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He is the only person in whose presence I experienced a sensation of which I might be thought incapable, a sensation of shame; he, and he alone, positively makes me ashamed of myself. ... The Socrates whom you see has a tendency to fall in love with good-looking young men, and is always in their society and in an ecstasy about them. ... , but once you see beneath the surface you will discover a degree of self-control of which you can hardly form a notion, gentlemen. Believe me, it makes no difference to him whether a person is good-looking; he despises good looks to an almost inconceivable extent nor whether he is rich nor whether he possesses any of the other advantages that rank high in popular esteem; to him all these things are worthless, and we ourselves of no account, be sure of that. He spends his whole life pretending and playing with people, and I doubt whether anyone has ever seen the treasures which are revealed when he grows serious and exposes what he keeps inside. However, I once saw them, and found them so divine and precious and beautiful and marvellous that, to put the matter briefly, I had no choice but to do whatever Socrates bade me.
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But our friend here is so extraordinary, both in his person and in his conversation, that you will never be able to find anyone remotely resembling him either in antiquity of in the present generation, unless you go beyond humanity altogether, and have recourse to the images of Silenus and satyr which I am using myself in this speech. ... Anyone who sets out to listen to Socrates talking will probably find his conversation utterly ridiculous at first, it is clothed in such curious words and phrases, the hide, so to speak of a hectoring satyr. He will talk of pack-asses and blacksmiths, cobblers and tanners, and appear to express the same ideas in the same language over and over again, so that any inexperienced or foolish person is bound to laugh at his way of speaking. But if a man penetrates within and sees the content of Socrates' talk exposed, he will find that there is nothing but sound sense inside, and that this talk is almost the talk of a god, and enshrines countless representations of ideal excellence, and is of the widest possible application; in fact that it extends over all the subjects with which a man who means to turn out a gentleman needs to concern himself.
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I may add that I am not the only sufferer in this way; Charmides the son of Glaucon and Euthydemus the son of Diocles and many others have had the same treatment; he has pretended to be in love with them, when in fact he is himself the beloved rather than the lover. (from the Symposium)

We have an impression from this description of Socrates of an extraordinary man with an extraordinary strength of purpose, but who baffles most who come into contact with him, except those who come to love him. He appears to speak in contradictory ways, and "pretends to be in love" with his followers, "pretending and playing with people", but despite this, he is the "beloved". This is all consistent with buddhahood, and Alcibiades' assessment of him shows Socrates' real nature to be that of a deeply religious man. Let us look at some more general pointers to Socrates as fully-realised jnani Master.

The Trial and Execution

The trial and execution of Socrates has parallels, in religion and mysticism, with that of Jesus and Mansur (a 10th century Muslim martyred in Baghdad), to give just two examples. Socrates was indicted on two counts: impiety, and corrupting the morals of the young. Plato devotes four dialogues, Euthyphro, The Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, to the events leading up to his trial and execution. That a man in ancient times was executed for blasphemy of some kind or another is no proof of course that he was a jnani. However the way in which Socrates defended himself (in the Apology), and the way in which he faced death (in the Phaedo) are extraordinary, and suggestive of a man who has transcended all identifications with self. His defence was remarkable, for he made no attempt to counter the charges in a manner that would have led the court to leniency; his offer of a counter-punishment likewise calculated more to irritate than to ameliorate the death-sentence, and his calm, even joyful, acceptance of his sentence was compounded by refusals of offers to escape. Even the manner in which he took the hemlock was remarkable, and was commented upon by the executioner (who generally faced understandable hostility and complaints from those he delivered the hemlock to).

Fits of Abstraction

Another, entirely different, piece of evidence for Socrates' status as jnani lies in the several accounts of his "fits of abstraction". The term has been put in quotation marks because we have come to use it in connection with Socrates without any clear idea of what it means, or what alternative terms we could use. In the West this term could mean anything from what was intended by the old-fashioned "brown study" (an absent-minded state that required perhaps a vigorous interruption to recall its owner to his or her surroundings) to "catatonic schizophrenia" (a state of complete unresponsiveness lasting for days, months or years, as with Nietzsche in his latter days). In their commentaries on Socrates Bertrand Russell uses the term "cataleptic trance," and Richard Maurice Bucke used "catalepsy." However, in the context of the spiritual his states may better described by the terms samadhi (Indian) or satori (Japanese) both of which mean a state of ecstatic union.

If Socrates' states were short in duration, and it was relatively easy to bring him out of them (snapping one's fingers, shouting, or even, as legend has it, the emptying of a chamber-pot over him by his wife) then the former terms, "fits of abstraction" or "brown study" might be appropriate. If the duration of these states were longer and accompanied by a clear deterioration in mental health, then "catatonic schizophrenia" might be appropriate. However, what the reports tell us are of states lasting from several hours to a day, where all attempts to reach him failed, followed by no adverse mental or physical effects. These reports have more similarities with the spontaneous samadhis so well-documented (for example) of Ramakrishna and Ramana Maharshi. In other accounts we hear of Ramakrishna "rigid as a corpse" for days on end. Plato assumes that Socrates was either lost in thought, or needing to solve a problem during these states: we never hear however of the particular train of thought or solved problem resulting from a specific episode.

Voices

A related phenomenon in Socrates' life seems to have been his hearing of a "divine voice" or daimon. Plato does not report these as directly linked to his "fits of abstraction", and they may have been a quite separate phenomenon. Socrates tells us that he heard this voice since childhood, and also mentions, in the Phaedrus that it only tells him to desist from something, never telling him what to do. This is problematic as evidence for the jnani, in that it might fall into the occult category. If the voice were that of an independent, autonomous, disembodied being such those posited by Steiner, or of an angel as described in many traditions, then it would be an occult phenomenon. On the other hand it may have been Socrates' own intuition, and related more to the way that he also took note of his dreams (as in the case of those that prompted him to write poetry while awaiting execution).

Socrates' Teachings on Immortality

Socrates' utterings are relatively consistent on the immortality of the soul, presenting a system that is almost a standard model of reincarnation with karmic consequences. Little adjustment is required for this model to fit Hindu or Buddhist thinking, and it is possible, given Abhayananda's assertion that Socrates met wandering Brahmins, that it came from the East (though Pythagoras is a more likely source). As mentioned earlier, however, reincarnation is essentially an occult topic, and not direct evidence of transcendence, other than it might inform the understanding of immortality. The clear conviction of the sense of immortality is evidence however, because timelessness is an essential transcendent quality.

Socrates as Master / Midwife

That Socrates was a Master of some kind or other is in little doubt, in the sense that Athenians of a certain type were drawn to him, and in some cases were devotees. More usually the picture presented of him is as a Master in the sense of an academic, a philosopher, or a rhetorician whose grasp of his subject was so profound and so compelling as to draw those to him who wished to learn these subjects. We have an image in the West of such an individual, quite divorced from a religious context, for whom it is right and proper to give such respect. The key quality of such an individual is intelligence, so a figure like Einstein, Marx, Freud or Jung fit the picture, and it is only natural that in a secular age we assume Socrates' attraction to be of the same kind. However the descriptions in both Plato and Xenophon are quite consistent with Socrates as jnani Master .

Closely connected to the possibility of interpreting the actions of Socrates and his associates as that of Master with disciples is the image handed down through antiquity of Socrates as "midwife". One of the scholars of Plato, Burnyeat, makes a typically Western assumption in this comment: "The necessary background to the picture of Socrates as midwife, without which the whole elaborate fancy would lose its sense, is of course the metaphor of the mind giving birth to ideas it has conceived." In the context of Socrates as jnani Master a quite different interpretation can be put on the metaphor: Socrates is midwife to the spiritual birth of his disciples. In this case it is not concepts that are born in the minds of the disciples (though these will naturally arise) but a spiritual awakening more properly associated with a silence of the mind.

Plato has Socrates expound at length (over four pages in fact) on the midwife image in the Theatetus, and it is a strikingly bold and outrageous passage concluding with: "It is quite clear that they have never learned anything from me; the many fine discoveries to which they give birth are of their own making. But to me and the god they owe their delivery." This assertion that Socrates knows no more than his disciples is typical of him, and has resonance with the concept of "beginner's mind" in Zen. For a philosopher in the modern sense to assert that they knew nothing would be to undermine their position, but for a jnani Master it is a reflection of their inner silence.

Xenophon

The portrait of Socrates from Xenophon is, as already mentioned, much more likely to be accurate than whatever we gain from Plato. In fact Xenophon recounts in a matter-of-fact way details of Socrates' life that Plato never does in his dialogues. Our great loss here is that Xenophon, though drawn to Socrates as an example of the "good" rarely conveys his verbal exchanges in any length or detail. Scholars have assumed that Socrates' thought was simply too lofty for the down-to-earth Xenophon, but our analysis would suggest that the dialogues, while containing some penetrating insight to be sure, were more like a Zen Master's highly obtuse diatribes.

Xenophon's portrait shows us a Socrates who is visible (i.e. always amongst people), temperate (in all things, and in a highly considered manner), humorous (hilariously so at times, as when he calls himself a pimp, and when he engages in a beauty competition with a friend called Critobulus), engaging (in the sense of reaching out to actual and potential disciples), democratic (despite his association with aristocrats and tyrants), interested (in human affairs), and positive (he teaches piety through gratitude for a munificent universe).

In Xenophon, unlike in Plato, we find that Socrates uses what is known much later as the "argument from design" to instil piety in his followers, and this is used on Euthydemus, taking up the whole of section 4.3 of the Memoirs of Socrates. This is too long to quote in full, but some of the positive and almost prayerful tone is captured in this passage:

In another parallel with Jesus, we find Socrates visiting a prostitute (or so we are meant to assume from the fact that she maintained a large household solely from the favours of wealthy men; perhaps 'courtesan' would be a better word). This is described in section 3.11 of the Memoirs, and finishes with the following exchange:

Socrates' "girlfriends" are, of course, his disciples, and we can read this passage as the good-humoured "fishing" for a new disciple that spiritual Masters are continuously engaged in. Socrates is clear that she must come to him and not the other way round though.

We also have a possible reference in Xenophon to one of Socrates' "fits of abstraction", or, in our terms samadhi. Socrates is talking about dancing:

If, and I grant that this is a big if, Socrates was prone to the kind of samadhi so well-documented in the case of Ramakrishna, then we can expect him to sometimes be still (as recorded in Plato) and sometimes to move in rapture, perhaps to 'wave' his arms about. Given that samadhi has not been widely understood in the West, and that it is rare occurrence anyway, we can expect both that witnesses may confuse it with dancing, and that Socrates may have encouraged this view because he had no other way of explaining it, or did not want to dwell on it.

Socrates and the West

A much more detailed study of Socrates as a Buddha is possible, given the amount of textual material available, but the extracts discussed here must at least establish its plausibility. In fact many historians have pondered why Socrates did not form the basis of the religion of the West instead of Christ, given his vigorous teaching method and eventual martyrdom. We can ask this question now in a slightly different way: why did not Socrates form the basis of a religion like the Buddha did?

There must be two parts to answer this question. Firstly, Socrates never formulated a doctrine like the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path, or to put it another way, a "dharma" or teachings did not acquire a coherent form and life of their own as they do in Buddhism. Neither did Socrates form a "sangha" or religious community, as Pythagoras did for example. Secondly, the spiritual ambience of Plato's Athens at approximately the same time in history as the Buddha's India was utterly different. Although, as we suggest, there had been other great jnani Masters such as Pythagoras and Heraclitus, they were either persecuted, unpopular, or found to be obscure. In the Buddha's India on the other hand there was a millennia-old tradition of transcendence, and a religious openness that has always marked this culture. The Buddha found hundreds if not thousands of individuals ready for his message, though we note that not all was plain sailing as several attempts were made on his life.

We have made the point before that the life and death of Socrates can be seen as the crucial point of divergence in the spiritual life of East and West. A great jnani Master was lost at this point, not because he was martyred, but because his chief apologist, Plato, presented him to Western history as a philosopher, and as far as we can tell, used Socrates to promote his own views. We note of course that the spiritual ambience of the time was already out of alignment with who Socrates really was (if we accept this thesis), but this point in history marks a point of no return. All successive buddhas (i.e. non-devotional Masters) born in the West have since been misinterpreted, or 'lost'. We will see later on how the rise of Christianity as a bhakti religion reinforces the relegation of the buddhas of the West to obscurity, even when they are Christian.

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