>> Welcome back to intro to
Philosophy 1010, Summer 2019 session.
Our book is Introduction to World
Philosophy and in this video,
we're going over question number
two for part A for exam four,
which says combined Plato's concept of the
three parts of the soul in the Republic
to his chariot analogy and the Phaedrus and the
Hindu concept of the three gunas as described
by Ishvara Krishna and Patanjali.
Okay. So this is the three parts of the soul and
the Republic we saw previously in the Phaedrus.
And the Phaedrus is Socrates
describing life between incarnations.
After your soul leaves one
physical body at death.
And before it takes another, it travels out
to the outermost heaven of the universe,
where it can see the absolute
ideas, the absolute idea of beauty
and justice, and all of the absolute ideas.
And then it can come back after 10,000
years, and he's got all kinds of stipulations
about what bodies you get in the next life.
But the analogy he uses, which is very similar
to the Katha Upanishad is
that the soul has three parts.
It's a charioteer, which is the intelligence or
reason, and then it has two horses with wings.
And one of the horses is bodily appetites and
the other horse is kind of chivalrous passion.
And the chivalrous passion horse
obeys the charioteer of reason,
but the horse that's filled with bodily
appetites is the one that represents that aspect
of the soul, doesn't listen to reason
and tends to pull the entire soul
down towards bodily desires on earth, instead
of out towards the horizon of the cosmos,
where it can perceive all of the
absolute ideas that reason feasts upon.
And then the three gunas are the
three modes of material nature.
The three strands that they talk
about in Ishvara Krishna's
verses on the analysis of nature.
So that's some key of philosophy
and the yoga sutras of Patanjali.
So the yoga philosophy, it has in common
the three modes of material nature,
everything is made of a combination
of three modes of nature.
And they are sattva guna.
So guna means strand or like a string.
So there's sattva guna, the mode of goodness.
Raja guna, the mode of passion,
and raja also means king,
and tama guna, the mode of ignorance.
And that's similar -- the parallel
for the Phaedrus analogy would be
that the sattva guna is the
charioteer and the winged horse
that obeys the charioteer is
raja guna, the mode of passion,
and then tama guna would be the bodily
appetites, the horse that strives downward.
So that's a very brief overview, but we
haven't gone over the part of the Republic
yet where Socrates is talking
about the three parts of the soul.
And another thing to keep in mind is,
does the soul really have three parts?
We saw in the Phaedo, which was the
dialogue about Socrates on the day
that he was given hemlock to drink that so he's
-- on the day of his death he was giving proofs
for why he's not afraid of death.
And one of them is that the
soul is non-composite.
It's not made up of parts,
and it was never assembled.
That's eternally a simple thing with no
parts, and that's more likely to be eternal.
If it hasn't been assembled,
it cannot be disassembled.
So to say that the soul has three parts
goes away from that claim in the Phaedo.
And also, according to the Samkhya philosophy
and just Hindu philosophy in general,
the three modes are not your soul.
They are the all-pervasive organizing
principles of the material cosmos,
which includes a subtle unmanifest nature.
And that is what Plato calls or has
Socrates call, or he probably --
it's the philosopher named Timaeus that
played or wrote a dialogue called the Timaeus.
In that dialogue, Timaeus talks about a
mortal soul, so that there's your soul proper,
and then encompassing that is a
subtle material body or a mortal soul,
and then covering that as the gross material
body and that the mortal soul carries you
from one gross physical body to another, but
that anything material is made of combinations
of the three modes of nature, three gunas,
sattva guna, raja guna, tama guna, goodness,
passion, and ignorance, or reason and
passion and appetites to use Plato's terms.
So that in the Phaedrus that the three parts
of the soul analogy, if you were to translate
that into the Hindu philosophy,
that's your subtle material body,
carrying the soul out to the outermost horizon.
If you haven't lost all attachment
to material desire,
then your subtle material
body takes you back down,
you have to choose another gross physical body.
When I say gross, I don't mean disgusting.
I mean, just tangible, visible, whereas
the subtle material body's not visible,
it's only visible through its effects.
Okay. So in the Republic on Page 84, Socrates
he is talking to Glaucon and Adeimantus.
And honestly, I don't know exactly which one
of the two brothers he's speaking to right now.
I should have looked it up, but at
anyway for our purposes, he's saying --
well, I'll just start here and
then I'll explain what he's saying.
"We won't I said be overly positive just yet.
But if on trial, this conception of
justice can be verified in the individual,
as well as in the state, there will
be no longer any room for doubt.
If it is not verified, we
must start a fresh inquiry.
First, let's complete the old
investigation, which we began.
You remember under the impression that if we
could first examine justice on a larger scale,
it would be easier to recognize
justice in an individual."
So that's the whole foundation of the
Republic, Plato's famous Republic.
They're looking for justice.
The question that they're all
discussing is what is justice?
And so Socrates proposes a solution.
He says, "Well, let's look for
justice in the ideally just state."
On the assumption that the state is just a
magnified version of the individual's soul.
And if we can find justice in the good state,
then we can identify justice
in the individual soul.
So he's trying to amplify, magnify the
image of the soul to the level of the state.
And then they develop the ideally just
state in their minds, in their imagination,
just for the purpose of locating it in the soul.
So it's this utopian state, and it takes a
lot of crazy turns and there's a lot of debate
over whether how serious Plato was to -- or
was he joking at any rate on the surface value,
they create this ideally just state, and it
turns out it has three classes, three castes.
There's the caste of the philosopher-kings or
the -- and then beneath them is the auxiliaries.
And then beneath them is the merchant
class and the laborers and everybody else.
And those three classes that
they established in the state,
justice is when those three classes
each do their own work properly.
The philosophers guide everybody,
and they live a life
of extreme ascetic renunciation, and they fight.
But most of the fighting is done by the
auxiliaries who are like the warrior class.
And they carry out the instructions
of the philosopher class.
And then the rest of the people engage in,
you know, growing the food and being merchants
and the regular business of society.
So those three classes are similar to the three
parts of a soul that we saw in the Phaedrus
and that now Socrates here, and the
Republic is going to say, there must be --
if the soul is reflected in
the state, those three classes
of the state must be reflected in the soul.
So there is the love of knowledge or reason.
There is the passionate or spirited
side, and then there's the love of money
or the love of material bodily goods.
And that's what he'll go on
to say, although it is --
he gives these kinds of warnings
at the beginnings
of his big grand schemes
that this might be all wrong.
And if so, we'll have to start again.
If you look on Page 84 on the right-hand
column, he says, "Very true I said,
and I don't think that the method
we're employing is at all adequate
to the accurate solution of this
question," whether the soul was many or one.
"The true method is another and
a longer one, still we may arrive
at a solution not below the
level of the previous inquiry."
So they go on ahead.
So he frankly confesses, we're not using
the appropriate method to discover whether
or not the soul is one or
three or what's going on.
But anyway, let's just continue.
Okay. So on the left-hand
column on Page 85, he's saying,
all right, we see these different states.
Some of them have more passion, like
the Northern states who like to fight.
Then he says, "Some of them love
knowledge like us here in Athens.
Some of them love money, like the
Phoenicians and the Egyptians."
Yeah okay, and don't you think
those states get those qualities
because those qualities are inherent in
the individuals who occupy those states.
It just transfers up from
the individual to the state?
He goes, "Yes, that must be the case."
So then he goes on to say, "But the
question isn't quite so easy when we proceed
to ask whether these principles
are three or one.
Whether that is to say, we learn with one
part of our nature or angry with another,
and with a third part, desire the
satisfaction of our natural appetites
or whether the whole soul comes
into play in each sort of action
to determine that is the difficulty."
"Yes." He said, "There lies the difficulty.
Then let us not try to determine
whether they are the same or different."
"How can we?"
He asked. I replied as follows, "The same
thing clearly can't act or be acted upon
in the same part or in relation to the same
thing at the same time, in contrary ways."
So he's going to go on to make that --
the same thing can't be different
from itself at the same time.
So the fact is you do have these
three parts of the soul, okay.
Again, in the Phaedo, he says, no, the
soul is definitely not made of parts.
It's just one whole soul.
These three parts of the soul,
more likely correlate to this,
the mortal soul that Plato
wrote about in the Timaeus.
I'll actually just for the time being -- let
me just read from the time Timaeus Section 69C.
He says, "And they," so he's talking
about offspring of the demigods
who help create the universe, "Imitating
him, received from him the immortal principle
of the soul and around this, they proceeded
to fashion a mortal body and made it
to be the vehicle of the soul and constructed
within the body of soul of another nature,
which was mortal subject to terrible
and irresistible affections."
So the mortal soul is
the mind, the subtle material
body that the Hindus talk about,
and that is what is influenced
by the three modes of nature.
The gunas, the sattva guna, raja guna, tama
guna, or what Plato calls the love of learning,
the spiritedness or passion, it's the
chivalrous part or chivalrous mode
of nature and then the bodily appetites.
That would be the tama guna
the mode of ignorance.
Okay. So he's saying, well, nevertheless,
he's saying the soul must have three parts.
He's saying here in the Republic,
although he warned,
I don't think we're doing this the right way.
So he said, "Haven't you ever noticed
that some people are thirsty,
but then they refuse to drink."
Yeah. I've noticed that you know, if
you're out in war and you're very thirsty
and you're battling, you
going to want to say, "Okay,
time out, I got to go get a sip of water."
You just say no to the part
of you that's thirsting.
So there's two parts, one part versus another.
So he says, all right, there's two
parts, one part that has desires.
And then another part that regulates the desire.
So he says, that must be reason.
Yeah, that's rational.
The reason says, "Don't, it's not
time to drink, just control yourself."
But then he introduces a third.
So this is on Page 87.
He says, well actually the bottom of
the left-hand column of 87, he says,
"Then we may fairly assume that there are two"
that's parts of the soul "and that they differ
from one another, the one with which a man
reasons we may call the rational principle
of the soul, the other, with which he loves and
hungers and thirsts, and feels the flutterings
of any other desire may be termed
the irrational or appetitive,
the ally of sundry pleasures and satisfactions."
"Yes," he said, "We may fairly assume
that to be different them to be different.
Then let's finally determine that there are
two principles existing in the soul and what
of passion or spirit is it a third
or a kin to one of the proceeding?"
And then, so now they're going to say,
all right, there's actually three parts.
And here's the story he says, "Well, I say,
there's a story I remember in which I put faith.
The story is that Leontius, the son of
Aglaion coming up one day from the Piraeus
under the north wall on the outside,
observed some dead bodies lying
on the ground at the place of execution.
He felt the desire to see them and
also a dread and abhorrence of them.
For a time, he struggled and
covered his eyes, but at length,
the desire got the better
of him, forcing them open.
He ran up to the dead bodies saying, "Look, you
wretches, take your fill of the fair sight."
And he says, "I've heard the story myself.
The moral of the tale is that anger
at times goes to war with desire
as though they were two distinct things."
And then he says, "Okay -- " I'm going
to continue to read this next paragraph.
"And aren't there many other
cases in which we observed
that when a man's desires violently
prevail over his reason, he reviles himself
and is angry at the violence within him.
In this struggle, which is like the struggle of
factions in a state, his spirit is on the side
of his reason, but for the passionate or
spirited element to take the side of desires,
when reason decides that she shouldn't
be opposed is a sort of thing,
which I believe you never observed occurring in
yourself nor I should imagine in anyone else."
All right.
So there's three parts of the soul, which is
more likely the mortal soul, and that is reason,
passion, and then desire or appetites.
And reason he'll go on to say in the state, the
reason is like the shepherd and the passion is
like the sheepdogs and then the
rest of the people are like sheep
and that the dogs obey the
voice of the shepherd.
And if someone tries to attack the sheep,
or if the sheep start acting unruly,
the dogs will discipline them.
So he's saying, okay, so, and that
passion inside, it boils and shifts
and is always on the side of justice.
If it has committed -- if a soul has
committed a wrong deed, and then the person
that you stole it from, or did
something bad to inflicts pain on you,
then your passion will not be
stirred for revenge because you say,
"Ah, it's just, just, I deserve it."
But if someone attacks you
and you don't deserve it,
then the passion inside will never
stop until justice is served.
So it loves justice, but
justice is perceived by reason.
So the reason, and then I'll see here
on Page 88, the left-hand column,
"The illustration is perfect," he replied,
"and in our state, as we were saying,
the auxiliaries were be dogs and to hear the
voice of the rulers who were their shepherds."
Okay. So that is the view of the three
parts of the soul in the Republic.
So now we're supposed to combine that
with the three parts of the soul described
in the Phaedrus and then the gunas.
So I will now turn over to Page 256.
So here's the Phaedrus and -- actually,
it's Page 257 on the left-hand column,
in the middle of the Page, he says,
"Of the nature of the soul though
her true form is ever a theme
of large and more than mortal discourse.
Let me speak briefly and in a figure
and let the figure be composite,
a pair of winged horses, and a charioteer.
Now, the winged horses and the charioteer
of the gods are noble and they work well,
but with people there's a problem,
with mortals, there's a problem."
But let me just continue to read here.
The next paragraph, "I'll endeavor to explain
to you how the mortal differs
from the immortal creature.
The soul in her totality has the
care of inanimate being everywhere
and traverses the whole heaven
appearing in diverse forms.
When perfect and fully winged, she soars
upward, and orders of the whole world,
the imperfect soul losing her
wings and drooping in her flight,
at last, settles on the solid ground."
All right.
So the soul in her totality traverses the whole
heaven and has care for all inanimate being.
We'll see all of the absolute ideas are in this
outermost sphere that the soul travels to in
between incarnations where the
absolute idea of justice is,
the absolute idea of beauty
in any other absolute form.
So we saw in the Republic, in the cave allegory,
the entire three-dimensional
material world unfolding over time.
Is like a shadow of the absolute
ideas or the eternal forms.
Those eternal forms we learn in the Phaedrus
are specifically out at the outermost horizon
of the cosmos that where
souls go between incarnations.
At the end of the Republic,
there's the Myth of Er,
the near-death experience of a soldier named Er.
He also went out to the outermost
horizon of the cosmos,
where he's witnessed other
souls choosing their next life.
And then each soul came back to
earth tethered to the horizon
of the cosmos by a thread of destiny.
So I've said in previous videos, the reason
I like to focus on this is not only that it's
such a crucial part of understanding
ancient Greek and ancient Indian philosophy,
but also that academic cosmology seems that's
come full circle back to this original idea
in the form of holographic string
theory, which I've talked about.
In the 20th Century, physics evolved away
from Newton's physics, which is very powerful
at predicting things in a certain
scale, but if you get too big
or too small, it doesn't work anymore.
You got special relativity, general
relativity, quantum mechanics,
and string theory, all in the 20th Century.
String theory combines relativity theory
and quantum mechanics, the theory of the big
and the theory of the very small.
And what it says, in a nutshell,
is that the past, the present,
and the future of the universe are
interwoven at the outermost sphere
where space-time is expanding
away from earth at the speed
of light, from our perspective on earth.
And that it radiates back into create the
three-dimensional illusion unfolding over time.
This holographic illusion, which is being
projected from this outermost horizon,
which is what Plato is saying, everything
comes from these absolute ideas.
They're located at the outermost horizon, the
soul in her totality merges with that horizon.
It never has to return.
He says in the Phaedo, but in the Phaedrus,
there's no choice to stay there forever
and that probably has something to do with
him in the Phaedrus identifying the soul
with what is most likely the subtle
material body, or the mortal soul
that has these three influences
of reason and passion and desire.
So it's not just an exercise in
understanding the history of an era
or look how ridiculous they
were back in those days.
They thought everything existed at
the outermost sphere of the universe,
and then that projected this illusory world.
Oh, that's ridiculous.
Well, that's where we're back to if you
listen to holographic string theory.
And so this might help us understand this
newest cosmology better if we go back
to this older form of it,
this kind of prototype.
All right.
So if you look on the right-hand column of Page
257, he's saying, "But when they go to a banquet
and festival," this is the demigods, "Then
they move up the steep to the top of the vault
of heaven, the chariots of the gods, and
even poise obeying the rain glide rapidly."
But for everyone else, there's
labor because the one horse
that wants all the bodily appetites is
constantly pulling the chariot down,
away from the outermost heaven.
"For the immortals, when they
are at the end of their course,
go forth and stand upon the outside of heaven.
The revolution of the spheres carries them
around, and they behold the things beyond.
He says, "There abides the very being
with which true knowledge is concerned,
the colorless formless intangible essence
visible only to mind the pilot of the soul."
That's what the divine intelligence feeds on.
He'll go on to say that, "She is replenished
and made glad until the revolution
of the world's brings around
again to the same place.
In the revolution, she beholds justice
and temperance and knowledge absolute not
in the form of generation or of relation, which
men call existence, but knowledge absolute
in existence absolute, beholding the
other true existences and like manner
and feasting upon them she passes down into
the interior of the heavens and returns home."
Okay. So that is what happens.
Now, I'm going to describe a little bit more
about these two horses and the chariots here.
On Page 259 -- actually at the bottom
of Page 258, the right-hand column.
It says that, "At the end of
the first thousand years" --
okay, I'm going to skip this other one,
"But the soul which has never seen the
truth will not pass into the human form
for a man must have intelligence of universals
and be able to proceed from the many particulars
of sense to one conception of reason."
Those are the absolute ideas.
Reason says, "Oh, look at all these trees."
What makes them a tree?
Oh, the idea of a tree, the perfect
essence of tree, and where is that?
At the outermost heaven.
"This is the recollection of those things
which our soul once saw while following God.
When regardless of what we now call being,
she raised her head up towards the true being,
and therefore the mind of the philosopher
alone has wings, this is just for as always,
according to the measure of his
abilities, clinging in recollection
to those things in which God abides.
In beholding them, He is what
He is, and he who employs
or write these memories is ever being
initiated into perfect mysteries
and alone becomes truly perfect, but as he
forgets earthly interests and is wrapped
in the divine, the vulgar demon mad and rebuke
him, they do not see that he is inspired."
All right.
So the absolute ideas in God's mind are
out at the outermost horizon of the cosmos.
What did Plato mean by the word God?
Different people have different opinions.
Some say it was an impersonal
ordering principle of the universe.
Some others say no.
He had the idea of a personal God interested in
our being because God supposedly sent Socrates
to Athens with a mission to get people to
care for their souls and not for their bodies.
At any rate that's where the absolute ideas are.
We'll see St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
follow that idea to develop catholic theology.
And so keeping that in mind, he goes on now
to explain the three parts of the soul better.
"So as I said, at the beginning
of this tale, I divided each soul
into three, two horses and a charioteer.
One of the horses was good and the other bad.
So the good horse, he says, is
a lover of honor and modesty
and temperance and a follower of true glory.
He needs no touch of the whip but is
guided by word and admonition only.
The other is a crooked lumbering
animal put together anyway,
any which way he has a short thick neck.
He is flat-faced and of a dark color
with gray eyes and blood-red complexion,
the mate of insolence and pride, shag-eared
and deaf hardly yielding to a weapons spur."
So the one horse is well-formed and he's a lover
of glory and all that horse needs is the word
of the charioteer, and then
that horse obeys, the other one,
when Socrates says he's a short thick neck and
has a flat face, he's making fun of himself
because he had a notoriously flat
face and bug eyes like a stingray.
He would make fun of himself.
Although he was also considered a
great soldier on the battlefield.
But the point here is you've got reason as
the charioteer, passion is the good horse,
and the appetitive part of the
soul is the shameful horse.
And the ending example is that the
shameful horse sees a lover and wants
to do sinful acts with the lover.
And then the rational part of the
charioteer and the good horse say, no,
we're not going over there, but eventually they
give in to the desires of the shameless horse.
"So they had first indignantly opposed him
and will not be urged on to do terrible
and unlawful deeds, but it lasts when
he persists in plaguing them they yield
and agree to do as he bids them."
So usually, the appetitive part of
the soul overrules reason and passion,
and people end up doing base sensual things.
All right.
So there is the Phaedrus.
And now onto Ishvara Krishna from
verses on the analysis of nature
and the yoga sutras of Patanjali.
So Page 218, on the left-hand column, Section 2.
"So the revealed or scriptural means of
removing the torments are like the perceptible,
i.e. ultimately ineffective,
for they are connected
with impurity, destruction, and excess.
A superior method different from both is the
discriminative knowledge of the manifest,
the unmanifest, and the knowing
one or knower, i.e. Purusha."
So there's the manifest and the unmanifest,
that's the gross and subtle material nature.
And the Purusha is the soul,
which is separate from matter.
So he'll go on to say that the -- I'm
looking for the part about the three gunas,
the right-hand column, Section 11.
"Both the manifest and unmanifest are
characterized by the three gunas constituents
or strands undiscriminated, objective
general, non-conscious productive.
The Purusha is the opposite
of them, although similar.
The gunas whose nature are
pleasure, pain and indifference serve
to manifest, activate, and limit.
They successively dominate, support,
activate and interact with one another.
Sattva is buoyant and shining.
Raja is stimulating and moving.
Tama is heavy and enveloping.
They function for the sake
of the Purusha like a lamp."
So sattva guna, raja guna, tama guna.
Sattva is buoyant and shining that's reason.
If you're going to compare it with Plato.
Raja, which means king that's the mode
of passion, which loves glory, chivalry.
Tama is ignorance, it wants bodily
pleasure, intoxication, and sleep,
and it's the heavy one that weighs things down.
Sattva is buoyant, raja is heavy.
And -- I mean, tama is heavy and raja's
tries to get the heavy part to go
up toward the buoyant understanding of reason.
So continuing here in the left-hand
column, "The plurality Purusha,"
so there's many individual souls.
"is established because of the diversity of
births, deaths and faculties, because of actions
or functions that take place at different
times and because of the differences
in the proportions of the three
gunas in different entities."
So everything is made of the three gunas.
Everything material manifest
and unmanifest, the gross matter
and the subtle mortal soul of the mind.
Everything from a rock to your mind is made of
these three strands of being, of material being
and they act like a lamp for
the soul because they create,
they enable you to see the material world,
but the entire material world is like a dream
of the higher spiritual world, to which you try
to return by shedding the three modes of nature.
And the three modes of nature as
a whole they're called Prakriti
or nature versus Purusha or the soul.
So Section 20, because of the proximity
or association of the two, i.e. Prakriti
and Purusha, the unconscious one, that's
Prakriti appears as if characterized
by consciousness, which is Purusha.
Similarly, the indifferent one appears
as if characterized by activity
because of the activities of the three gunas.
So the three gunas are acting.
When you act your soul is not really acting,
it's the three gunas that are acting,
and you're just along for the ride.
The soul is encompassed by the subtle
material, unmanifest, mortal soul,
or subtle material body, the mind, and that's
manipulated by the three modes constructed
of the three modes, and your gross body
is also constructed the three modes.
For example, they say foods, every food is
as a proportion of the three modes of nature,
but some have more predominantly in the
mode of goodness or passion or ignorance.
Food in the mode of goodness would be
like fruits, fresh fruits, and vegetables.
In the motive of passion would be raw-ish
type meat, like a tiger might like,
or even some vegetables, like a
garlic kind of an aphrodisiac.
And then in the motive of
ignorance would be old rotten food.
Some people like to age food,
fermented foods, and like mushrooms even
because they grow out of decomposing matter.
And then these three modes are in the mind
and that's what determines the caste system.
So it's not supposed to be,
Oh, my parents were this caste.
Therefore I'm in this caste.
It's supposed to be, you become the
caste that you are qualified to be
and that's determined by the modes of nature.
Which one of the modes are you predominated by?
If predominantly in the mode of
goodness, then you're a Brahman.
If predominantly in the mode of
passion, then you're Kshatriya,
which is the warrior political caste,
which is why raja guna means king.
If you're predominantly in
the mode of ignorance, tamas,
then you'll be in the laborer class.
If you're a mixed-mode of rajas and
tamas, then you're in the merchant class.
So the Hindus have four castes.
Whereas Plato combined them
into three, but his third class,
the merchant trader class,
includes the laborers for Plato.
So I will -- All right, so that is the ending
of Ishvara Krishna's verses on the analysis
of nature, Page 219 Section 23, he
says, the buddhi, which means will
or intellect is characterized by ascertainment
or determination, virtue, knowledge,
non-attachment, and possession
of power are its satvika form,
its tamasa form is the opposite of these.
So vice, ignorance, attachment,
and impotence, that's tama guna,
and sattva guna, so raja is intermediate.
And according to Plato, the mode of goodness
or reason controls the mode of passion
or raja guna, and then raja
guna tries to control the mode
of ignorance, tama guna, the bodily appetites.
Although more often than not, it
seems the bodily appetites end
up controlling the other two.
Okay. So now the yoga sutras of
Patanjali, he says on Page 220 Section 116,
"Superior to that is the absolute
disinterestedness or lack of desire for manifest
or on manifest phenomenon, guna qualities,
because of perception of
the Purusha, true person."
So the best kind of a person is unattached
to the manifest physical objects,
as well as mental states of mind.
The soul Purusha is detached.
And the goal is to achieve a state of
aloneness, separateness from matter.
Kaivalya that's the ultimate
good that they're striving for,
but we're just focusing on
the three modes of nature.
So if you move over to Page 221, Section
2.18, he says, "What is to be seen, i.e.,
in nature is characterized by the three
qualities or strands of A, intelligence, B,
activity, and C, stability or
inertia, sattva, rajas, and tamas."
It includes the gross elements and the sense
organs and has its meaning enjoyment for
or liberation of the conscious being, or
enjoyment for, or liberation of the soul.
That's the same image in the Phaedrus.
The charioteer with the two horses can either
pull the soul up to the outermost horizon,
where it can perceive the absolute ideas,
or it can pull this all down to the earth
where its wings fall off, and it feasts
on the pasture of bodily appetites.
So that's a good comparison
Section 2.18 in the Phaedrus.
Okay. So I'm going to read here Section
2.25, "When spiritual ignorance is no longer,
the conjunction is no longer,"
of soul and the three modes.
"This is the relinquishment,
the aloneness, Kaivalya,
the highest good of the seer,
the conscious being."
So over on Page 222, Section 3.49, "The yogin
whose awareness is restricted to perception
of the difference between the strand
of nature called intelligence, sattva,
and the conscious being achieves
mastery over all states of inner being
and knowledge of it all as well."
Okay. So you have to distinguish your mind from
the three modes of material nature, your soul.
I mean, your soul must be
distinguished from the three modes,
which include the subtle body of the mind.
Sattva guna is the guna closest to the soul.
So the last attachment, you have to be detached
from the material mode of goodness in order
to achieve the spiritual mode
of pure goodness, Kaivalya.
So continuing here on the left-hand
column, Section 3.54, "The cognition born
of discrimination carries to the further
shore with everything as its object
in every fashion and non-sequentially."
So the further shore is the aether,
the Akasha, the outermost horizon.
So the Hindus and Plato both say that's
where absolute knowledge is to be heard.
"Of every object in every
fashion and non-sequentially."
So every object that ever existed in
the universe from the past, the present,
and the future is interwoven at that
outermost aether sphere, the Akasha,
and everything inside the volume of the universe
is made of the three modes of material nature.
So you're trying to disentangle
yourself from these three modes.
So continuing Section 3.55, "When
the intelligence strand I suffer
and the conscious being are equal
impurity, aloneness, Kaivalya ensues."
So the final transformation
at the furthest shore,
where everything is experienced
simultaneously, is when the material mode
of goodness is transformed into the
pure form of spiritual knowledge.
When they are of equal purity,
then you've reached this aloneness.
Karma is neither good nor bad.
That belongs to the yogi and for others.
It is of three types, good, bad, or a mix.
And skipping to Section 413,
"Particulars are manifest or subtle.
They are of the nature of combinations of
the strands of the three gunas," so manifest
and subtle, gross matter, subtle matter.
"The truth or particularity of a thing
is due to a unique transformation
of nature, a unique combination of gunas."
So everything is made of these
three modes of material nature.
And over on Page 223, it says, Section 431.
"Then since awareness is unlimited, when
parted from coverings and impurities,
what remains to be known as trivial.
Vents the completion of processes
of transformation on the part
of the strands, gunas their purpose fulfilled."
I'll skip to Section 434, "Aloneness.
Kaivalya, the highest good,
entails the reversal of the course
of the strands or qualities of nature, gunas.
Now, empty of meaning and value for the
conscious being, or it may be understood
as the power of consciousness returned
and established in its own true self."
When you reach the furthest shore, the outermost
horizon of the universe, your soul merges back
with the absolute ideas of God's mind,
that's what Plato says in the Phaedrus,
and that's also what is indicated
here in the yoga sutras of Patanjali.
So I think we've gone over all the basis for the
discussion question, which I'll read again now.
So part A, this is for exam
for question number two.
Combine Plato's concept of the three
parts of the soul and the Republic.
So that's Chapter 3.22, to his chariot
analogy and the Phaedrus and the Hindu concept
of the three gunas as described
by Ishvara Krishna and Patanjali.
