‘Know thyself’ – Delphic Oracle

What is the interpretation given by modern philosophers to the Delphic injunction “O man, know thyself”? (Question in Quora)

This knowledge or question is one modern philosophers, psychologists, educators, and people in general are, to my knowledge, not interested in.

‘… self-knowledge, is hard to come by. To ‘know thyself’ (Orphic oracle) is a tall order, and most people are not interested in making the effort, or know how to go about it. But man is called upon to surpass, transcend himself, not to ‘make himself’. Until that happens, it has been said, “we are all hypocrites”. As we have seen, we cannot blame the ‘ego’ (or one’s ‘personality’: “the way I am”), that phantom, mask or impostor, for having infected us in the first place. Is it genetics? Heredity? Clearly, in the end, no one can escape responsibility – if we take the individual (‘I’, myself) as separate, or s/he take themselves as such. What we call ‘my ego’ is nothing but an excuse, a rationalization and, ultimately, an escape from real freedom.’ — Ego, ‘ego’, and metaphysics – Consequences for Psychotherapy Continue reading

What is Death – part 4 (Mythology).

aesculapius2

(Asclepios or Aesculapius)

Part 3 of this essay should have ended with the clarification that the statement:  ‘there is no other transmigrant but the Lord’, is but a doctrine, even though a very high spiritual or metaphysical doctrine, and, as every doctrine, it is (only) mithya, that is, ultimately not real, not the “realest” real. It can be stultified.

During my long written dialogue with Peter Bonnici centering on the ‘terrestrial garden’, I had said: ” They (myth and mithya) are quite different, though there is an overlap in the way we can make use of either of them in order to bring out a deeper understanding of something that may only be implicit”.

Peter’s eloquent reply was: “There is definitely a difference between the two. Though, as you say, there is overlap. Everything, including language and stories and concepts and symbols come under the category of mithyā– their existence cannot be denied, their usefulness at the transactional level cannot be denied, but their absolute independent reality can be denied. They are expressions of sat-cit, pure existence-consciousness. And they ultimately resolve into sat-cit, a thorn to remove a thorn is also discarded at the end. There is only one thing that isn’t mithyā: Brahman, Reality, the Whole. So myths do have value and are not to be dismissed. The analogy given is of using the branch to locate the moon”. Continue reading