Plato’s “Meno,” March 30, 2010

“Socrates, I certainly used to hear, even before meeting you, that you never do anything else than exist in a state of perplexity yourself and put others in a state of perplexity. And now you seem to me to be bewitching me and drugging me and simply subduing me with incantations, so that I come to be full of perplexity. And you seem to me, if it is even appropriate to make something of a joke, to be altogether, both in looks and in other respects, like the flat torpedo fish of the sea. For, indeed, it always makes anyone who approaches and touches it grow numb, and you seem to me now to have done that very sort of thing to me, making me numb. For truly, both in soul and in mouth, I am numb and have nothing with which I can answer you. And yet thousands of times I have made a great many speeches about virtue, and before many people, and done very well, in my own opinion anyway; yet now I’m altogether unable to say what it is.”  —Plato’s “Meno”

Participant 1: If it’s unconditioned you could also say then it doesn’t exist.

David: Right, exactly, if by existing you mean perceiving, perceivable, perceivable in any sense.

P1: Right.

David: So, is there something that exists when all perception stops? Or can that thing be called either Being or non-being? Total Being, fullness, or the total emptiness of all things? It probably can be considered either.

P1: Well, it would have to be both and neither.

David: Right, that’s correct. I’m glad you said that. Both and neither at the same time because you really will have turned language inside out at that point. You’d be getting into the core structure of the mind where language itself is birthed. Wherever that is. Whether it’s in the mind or out of the mind. Whether it’s in the atmosphere of the world or whether it’s in a human subjectivity. Wherever that is.

Participant 2: I always feel like my mind’s running off a cliff when we talk about what can’t be talked about.

P1: Yeah, it blows my mind.

Participant 3: At the same time my mind’s like, “Gosh darn it, I want that permanent realization.”

David: You’re not listening.

P3: Oh, no no, I am listening. It’s just the mind is still it’s um…. I think when you talk in these terms what it does is paralyze the mind because the mind…it frustrates, it’s just it’s an immovable object meaning an irresistible force or something….

David: It’s interesting you use the word paralyze. If you read the “Meno,” Plato’s dialogue the “Meno,” Socrates, the character, is accused of being a torpedo fish who stings whoever he’s talking to and makes them numb, paralyzes them. And Socrates says, “Oh, that’s fine if you call me that, as long as you understand that I too am numb.” In other words, he’s in that same state of paralysis as is the one who gets stung by him.

P3: It’s infectious.

David: And what that sting does it puts an end to the superficial wandering of the mind, the mind that is running itself in all of these autonomous or self-generating concepts that go nowhere. Do you follow? You can read hundreds of books of enlightenment, on enlightenment and not know what it is in the end because you’re simply functioning in those autonomously, self-generating concepts that go nowhere. You’re stuck in a superficial level of language and the use of language.

So, here what you mentioned is of significance, this paralysis where the mind is at the end of its tether. The mind has been pushed beyond its tolerable and familiar framework, and therefore it begins to literally stop. It gets jolted into stopping. It gets shocked into stopping, and then now there is the chance of listening. Once that happens you have the ears of your ears open.

P3: That’s interesting. Also as you get closer to that paralysis or get closer to what you can’t get closer to, things typically I feel things get more energetic around my consciousness and body.

David: It should have an effect even on the physical frame, absolutely.

P3: So, it’s interesting because we’re talking about that which cannot be talked about using to the best of our ability…we know that there it it that which cannot be talked about impacts us physically in the physical.

David: It only cannot be talked about, you may be able to talk in it. Or, it may be able to talk in you as you, if you are informed about it, if you are aligned in it, or if it has awoken.

P3: So, a kind of interesting area because if that is kind of the merging of samsara and nirvana in a sense, it’s the unqualified taking on a quality through you.

David: Correct, let’s go slowly here because it may take on a quality through me, but it is not for the me. It does not get hung up on what we call self-identity or any of the attributes of self-identity, the attributes being personality, emoting, conceptualizing. It won’t get rutted in any one of those or claim an autonomous identity in any of those facets.

P3: But there seems to be a functionality that it does gravitate towards, the function of the guru facilitates this merging of the unconditional with the conditional. I mean geez, right now everything is lit up by talking about it, but it must be this quality of speaking about it. Then you potentize this….

David: Like I said, at first the mind is reduced in its autonomous functioning. It’s prohibited from  indulging in illusory or delusory concepts, the concepts which are usually gripping a human mind. Everyone goes around thinking that they know, assuming that they know. They know what the world is. They know who they are. They know who you are, and other people. And yet none of that is obviously true. But it takes a special kind of effect in Consciousness to stone the mind out of that self-hypnotizing activity.

And then it’s a question of simply aligning your mind with a mind that has fully dissolved in the a priori Being, a mind that is still functional on its superficial level. There’s the way in which samsara and nirvana or relativity and absoluteness are married, only because of that, that it births itself in a human mind that is in an apparent body, apparently still functioning.

This numbing or paralyzes can also be called darshan. When you inquire very deeply or you’re in the presence of someone who has spent his entire life inquiring very deeply, this can be shared. It comes within the field of human relations.

P3: That’s another topic that’s interesting. First that in this human nervous system such magic can happen that a bridge can be accessed and then shared amongst other human nervous systems. It’s amazing, and thank God for the universe’s allowing this to happen.

David: We don’t want to thank God, because if we thank God then we have to “no thank” him for not taking so long to make it available. So, we stay away from monotheistic relationships with talking about the source, in the context of talking about the source.