Philosophy 101

Tales of the Socratic Future : IV

The Bible was re-composed in the 17th century and annotated as the King James Version. The Mahabarata went through similar revisions. Its possible that Latin doesn't allow for too close a translation to modern languages for the Greek legends have not found new insights into their treasures.

Students of the classics may find when reading the works that it provides little help for a focused and clear understanding of the issues. It distorts the mind and crashes the student's' enthusiasm for continuing. It persuades the student that he is less than worthy.

Virgil's ' Aeneid ' is a prime example of such an experience. The texts do not rely on what we consider is a normal scheme of perception by the modern mind. We are accustomed in the English language to speak in respect of a subject who is engaged in a verb of action on an adjectived day, in respect of an object. We speak in an individual perception. The classics take the view of an all seeing eye of gnosis, if you will, that represents a collective experience in the individual.

The reader senses the scheme of the classics and quite quickly feels self conscious when compared to a persona of such illustrious personality. It causes a self defense and we give up. The alternatives we subscribe to thereafter take the form of a play ( Dionysus ), love and fertility ( Venus ) or a family relation ( Zeus ). Each of these individuals represented our past efforts to make the classics available to the understanding of the common man. It is the declared objective.

In doing so, these bards brought their personal life experiences to relate to that of Zeus, Hercules or Juno. It's not too difficult to do that but a person so dedicated to the task may have to undergo some specialized training for the purposes to intuit the collective will in us and accept it as representative of all that had gone before.

Parts of the training may involve penances on account of the way man perceives sin and his distance from the divine idea. In the Bible the bard placed himself in the perception of the creator who perceives his son born in the constellation Taurus and according depicted Christ's birth in a manger. A devotion to the tasks helps a person do that and maybe five days sleeping on the streets. I did that and it wasn't too bad actually.