The True Philosopher

The real philosopher has reason to be of good cheer when he is about to die. After death he may hope to obtain the greatest good in the other world.

The true devotee of philosophy is always pursuing death. He has had the desire of death all his life long.

They are right in thinking so, but not in discovering the death that a philosopher deserves.

Death is separation of soul and body. A philosopher should not care about the pleasures of love, eating, and drinking. He instead despises costly acquisition and the adornments of the body.

He would like to get away from the body as far as he can and to turn to the soul.

He will try to dissever the soul from the body. People think that a person who has no sense of bodily pleasure is not worth having life.

Is the body a hinderer or a helper in the actual acquiring of knowledge?

Does sight and hearing have any truth in them?

The poets say they are inaccurate witnesses. Thus the soul cannot attain the truth while she is deceived by the body.

The truth is revealed to the soul as a thought when the soul leaves the body aspiring after true being.

Thought is best when the mind is gathered into herself and none of these things trouble her, neither sounds, sights, pain, or pleasure.

In this the philosopher dishonours the body. His soul runs away from his body and desires to be alone and by herself.

There is absolute justice, absolute beauty, and absolute good. But we can never see these.

Absolute greatness, health, strength, and of the essence or true nature of everything.

These cannot be perceived by our bodily organs. The closest we can get to knowing their several natures is through our intellectual vision.

This will give us the most exact conception of the essence of each thing.

We attain the purest knowledge of them by going to each with the mind alone.

We should not introduce or intrude sight or any other sense together with reason in the act of thought.

Instead, with the very light of the mind in her own clearness, we should search into the very truth of each.

We should get rid of our eyes, ears, the whole body as these are the distracting elements.

• They infect the soul and hinder it from acquiring truth and knowledge.

When real philosophers consider all these things, they will be led to make a reflection. They will say: ‘Our argument is that while we are in the body our desire will not be satisfied. This path of thought ends this argument.’

The body is a source of endless trouble to us by its:

• needing food
• being liable to diseases
• loves, lusts, fears, fancies of all kinds, endless foolery
• taking away from us the power of thinking
  • This is the cause of wars, fightings, and factions.

The lusts of the body come but from the body. Wars are occasioned by the love of money. Money has to be acquired for the sake and in the service of the body.

These impediments give us no time for philosophy. Even if we are at leisure and can do some speculation, the body is always breaking in on us. It causes turmoil and confusion in our enquiries, and prevents us from seeing the truth.

For us to have pure knowledge of anything, we must be quit of the body. The soul in herself must behold things in themselves.

And then we shall attain the wisdom which we desire after death.

While in the body, the soul cannot have pure knowledge.

In this present life, I we make the nearest approach to knowledge when we:

• have the least possible intercourse or communion with the body
• keep ourselves pure until the hour we die

Thus having got rid of the foolishness of the body, we shall:

• be pure and hold converse with the pure
• know of ourselves the clear light everywhere, the light of truth.

The impure are not permitted to approach the pure.