Chapter Seven

Third Step

WAITING ON MYSTERY

Attentiveness to beauty, particularly human beauty,
is one of the first steps.
Diotima to Socrates, Plato's SYMPOSIUM 210a

HE HAD SAID yes TO HER INVITATION, AND NOTHING HAD happened. She had invited him to go where he had never been, and though he had doubted this was possible, he had concealed his doubts, and said yes, I'm willing to go, and they had not gone anywhere, but sat by the fire. Diotima and Nestor sat silently as if waiting for something or someone. She sat with her back to the hearth, and Nestor sat to one side, and he sat between them.

Socrates liked to think he was a seeker. Now he had an insight, flaring like an ember: Rather than search for anything he would be happy if she handed him whatever she thought he needed to know so he could get back to living his life. He waited for her to tell him what she thought it was. Talk, after all, was how he learned and thought, and lived.

And still she sat silently with Nestor, motionless except for the quiet breath that lifted the brooch on her shoulder. He realized she was speaking metaphorically when she invited him to take another journey, but he expected something to happen. The Greek word metaphor meant carrying something across. He had an image of himself carrying the knowledge she would give him, taking the sheets of words in his hands, rolling them in a scroll, and carrying them home where he would, presumably, find something useful to do with them. But even on a metaphorical journey there was a door to open, a threshold to cross, a new beginning surging with movement.

He was ready to jump out of his chair. If it had not been night with a whole long mountain to traverse in the dark and only a cloudy moon to light the way, he would have risked breaking his neck to head back to Athens. Bristling with irritation, he could not help noticing that though she and Nestor sat as if they were waiting for something, or someone, they sat without any sign of impatience. The old man was so still it was possible he was napping, but as soon as Socrates decided with some amusement that Nestor had fallen asleep, he saw with a start that the old man's eyes were glinting at him. What on earth was he telling him? For what or for whom were they waiting?

The door opened, and Telemachus came in with an armload of wood. He dropped down beside the hearth, and piled on logs. After a bit the flames rekindled, and leapt. The fire lit up his face. He rose and turned toward the darkness, and went silently out, shutting the door on the hall that now glowed like the inside of a shell filled with sunset. After a moment's analysis, Socrates decided that Telemachus could not possibly be signaling a beginning. He slouched lower in his chair, and looked darkly at the flames.

Clearly Eros was the son of Poverty, he thought gloomily. Not that he took the story seriously, nor did Diotima intend him to, as she indicated with her little joke that at their feast the gods lacked wine. Nevertheless Love's poverty and desire were vivid images, and reminded him how much he lacked and how much he desired. He shifted in his chair, simultaneously elated at the possibility she might share her special knowledge with him, and depressed at what he didn't know. It was all very well to think about going back to Athens, but what would he find there but the misery of failure and a life increasingly impossible to live, as if in a strange and frightening way he were going blind and wandering in the dark. He felt his life might depend on what Diotima was willing to tell him, but her silence was like a deep stream separating him from her. He stole a glance at her face. She looked at him with an expression that was purposeful yet melting.

He dropped his eyes, blinked rapidly, went hot, then cold, and faced the personal truth that he longed to learn about love, and that he had followed Diotima here in the hope he might learn what he needed to live. He had no alternative but to see this journey through. At the same moment it finally occurred to him that they were waiting for him. While he lounged in his chair, they were sitting upright, as if, to make an odd comparison, they were generals on horseback, waiting for him to join the line. His eyes widened, and he shot to attention, sitting straight up, and ready to wait by the silent stream for the rest of the night if that was what was required of him.

"Good man," said Nestor in a warm, dry voice. They were ready to begin.

According to Plato, Diotima revealed to Socrates many of the steps he needed to take, including what I call the third step. I believe she did, but not exactly as Plato describes them.

It is not necessary to learn breathing techniques in order to follow the trail, for following the trail helps a person to breathe, yet being able to breathe deeply and easily contributes to the experience. Diotima would not have needed to speak to Socrates about breathing because every Athenian boy learned how to breathe when he trained as an athlete and soldier. So, too, with people who learn how to swim. Unfortunately as soon as I start to think about breathing I suck in air without releasing any, and run out of oxygen. “When you let out your breath, let it out with an ish,” Tim Laurence once told me, and he breathed an audible ish lasting for half a minute. It was a playful sound that didn’t take itself too seriously, and when I concentrated on breathing out, rather than in, and on saying ishshsh, I breathed easily. I discovered that in order to breathe, I had to let air out. I had to empty myself to receive.

But as I say, Socrates didn’t have to learn to breathe. He sat upright in his chair as the fire chuckled, and waited expectantly for the words that would describe the knowledge he wanted. To his consternation Diotima handed him a small stick. She asked him to hold it in his palm, and look at it. That is, he was to look at it, to wait on it in silence, to gaze at it and to think of nothing but the stick. He was not to make up stories about the stick or to forget about the stick while looking at it and think about something else. He was, simply, to look attentively at the stick.

Socrates was about to protest, but he caught Nestor's eye. He could hardly assert it was an idiotic exercise without first experiencing it. Besides there was something in Diotima's manner that made him feel the exercise was more important than he understood, as if his life might depend on whether he could learn it.

He sat in his chair and in the flickering light of the fire looked down at the stick in his palm. Its grey skin was peeling in places, showing a grey wood underneath. Once, he imagined, it had been connected to a living tree. The small knob at the end, and the smaller knobs along its length suggested stillborn buds. Life had moved inside it, and abandoned it, and it had fallen on the mountain close to the tree where it had grown. He did not know the name of that tree or whether it still lived.

After a short while he ran out of things to think about the stick, and briefly grew engaged in thinking about his palm, across which the slender knobbly stick was lying. He had never looked so closely at his fingers and the lines in his palm before. He was startled when Diotima said, “Look not at your hand, Socrates, but at the stick.” He wondered with some impatience how long he would have to carry on like this, but he gazed at the stick all the same, as she had instructed. 

He had looked at the stick for some time, though for how long he could not be sure, when the stick began to glow. His palm had vanished, but a living fire ran along the length of the stick, beautiful and alluring, transforming the stick's dry deadness, and making it seem wonderful.

“Look at the stick,” Diotima said, “not at an illusory fire.”

Surprised and chagrined, but making the best of her correction, Socrates saw once again the plain, old stick. He had read the Ionian philosophers carefully. He was aware that Heraclitus had spoken of transformation. Like the waters in a stream and the stream itself, the stick would become something else, as it had seemed to do in his palm. Diotima, however, was not asking him to see transformations, but to look at the stick. He tried to do what she was asking him to do. As he did he forgot himself, he forgot his thoughts, he forgot his interest in making what he saw interesting. For a moment he saw the stick, and the moment became momentous.

The stick was no caduceus, no wand writhing with snakes belonging to Hermes. It was a dead stick, with nothing extraordinary about it. But sitting in silence with the stick and gazing at it Socrates began to feel the humble stick's connection with the kosmos. Was it possible? As if releasing his horse from a bridle, he quietly released the thought. He was not to analyze connections, but to gaze at the stick. He gazed, and once again forgot Diotima and Nestor and most profoundly, himself. He gazed at the stick, and felt the stick sharing a silent connection with the kosmos as if the stick were joined with the deep and starlit heavens and with him. Holding the stick protectively, he gazed, and felt their starry union. He might almost say he found the stick...

He flinched. Diotima had taken the stick from him, and thrown it into the fire. But she saw him wince, and was pleased. 

He held the memory of the stick and the starlit kosmos in his hand like a small and precious brooch. Curiously a brooch is yet another meaning for the Greek word kosmos.

There are many ways to look at a stick. Each person looks at the stick differently, and Socrates might have been more on task if he had simply gazed without feeling any connection with the kosmos. The goal of the exercise is to gaze attentively, and not let the self intrude. Still, if thoughts and feelings come, they come. One simply tries to gaze as attentively as one can.

“Socrates,” said Diotima, touching him gently on the shoulder before she sat down, “you remember how Penelope brought her husband’s bow and quiver-load of arrows to the suitors who had beset her house and lusted to possess her.”

He remembered. Penelope had staged a contest in the style of her husband, Odysseus, who used to set up twelve axe heads in a line like a gallery of iron, then stand back and shoot an arrow through their sockets. Inspired by the goddess Athene, and unaware that her husband was already in the house and sitting disguised as a beggar in his own hall, Penelope told the suitors that the man who could shoot an arrow from her husband's bow through the axe heads would have her. And Telemachus threw off his scarlet cloak, and dug a trench for the axes, and set them in a straight line, and tamped the earth around them.

First, however, one of the men would have to string the hero's great, recurved bow. One by one the suitors tried, but each man failed even to bend the bow, never mind string and shoot it. They set the bow before the fire, and warmed and greased it, but they were not strong enough to bend it. Proud and insolent and half drunk, they decided to try again next day, but at the command of Telemachus, the swineherd who had been carrying the polished bow from suitor to suitor carried it over to the beggar.

The suitors shouted, and demanded he put the bow down, but the beggar who was Odysseus took the great bow in his hands, and turned it round, surveying it to make sure worms had not riddled the tips during his absence. As the suitors watched agape, he calmly stretched the bow with the effortless ease of a skilled musician "who makes fast both ends of a piece of twined cat-gut and strains it to a new peg in his lyre." With the bow strung, he proved the string, which sang to his pluck, as sharp as the swallow’s cry. The suitors sang out in alarm.

Odysseus snatched up a keen bronze-shafted arrow. He notched it to the string, drew, and just as he sat, without bothering to stand up, released the shaft so it flew through the sockets of the twelve axes without fouling a single one.  

Yes, Socrates remembered, and he understood what Diotima was saying. Odysseus' strength had allowed him to bend the bow and shoot it, but only the practice of attentiveness had allowed him to shoot the arrow with so straight an aim. Attentiveness, Diotima might almost have said, is essential for a warrior or a mother, a philosopher or a lover.

 As if silently recalled by her, Telemachus reentered the hall. He sat down in one of the chairs with his back to the fire, relaxed and smiling. Diotima asked Socrates to look at him. She asked Socrates to look at his face, and only his face. Telemachus closed his eyes. Nonplussed at Diotima’s instructions, Socrates looked over at Nestor, who gave him a nod.

The hall had grown dark again as the fire burned low. The light that remained was just sufficient for looking unobtrusively. As instructed Socrates looked at Telemachus, and tried to give him the same attentiveness he had given the stick. Telemachus was not conventionally beautiful. He had a round face, and a small nose, and his dark lashes covered his closed eyes, but his posture conveyed strength and his curving lips suggested he was relaxed, and untroubled by any feeling of vulnerability. Socrates mused at the experiences he saw dimly mirrored in his face, and sensed the boy’s energy and self-possession. 

The silence deepened. Socrates' thoughts faded away. His attentiveness became free. He no longer projected his ideas and feelings on the young man, but silently received the clarity and mystery of his presence. Almost immediately, however, Socrates was distracted by the hope he would feel that connection with the universe he had felt with the stick, surely intensified since this was a living human being. But he felt nothing, nothing at all. Disappointed he had just sufficient wisdom to resist manufacturing a connection.

He continued to gaze, but like a ship that has slipped anchor, his mind drifted away, and he thought about the interesting exchange of ideas he must be missing in Athens. When he returned with a jerk to the exercise, he saw Telemachus' face had become bright, as if lit, though the dying fire was behind him. He glanced at Diotima, to dispel the illusion, and saw her eyes were closed, and her face was radiant. He turned round to look for the flare of a torch lighting their faces, but there was none. The hall was darker than before, yet their faces seemed infused with bright beauty.

Struggling to understand what he was seeing, he met Nestor's thoughtful eyes, and was reminded – how could he forget, he had memorized the lines – of that moment of extreme danger when Odysseus and Telemachus meet secretly to remove weapons from the darkened hall of their house, and Telemachus gasps, “Father this is marvelous what I see: The walls of the hall and the crossbeams of fir and the pillars that rise glow in my eyes as if with a flame. Surely some god is within.” Odysseus, who sees and understands the significance of that radiance, answers his son with a response that echoed down the centuries: Be silent.

So now Socrates took the advice of the hero, and was silent. He was both doubtful he had seen what he thought he saw, and worried that his inattentiveness might have caused him to miss something important. Telemachus opened his smiling eyes, stretched, and left the hall. Diotima opened her eyes, and giving Socrates a joyful look remarked, "Attentiveness to beauty, particularly human beauty, is one of the first steps."

This step, being attentive, is one with which we are deeply familiar. A moment’s thought tells us it is difficult to feel loved by a person who is inattentive, and impossible to really love another person inattentively. The third step is not particularly difficult, but it depends on our willingness to be awake and really look. Stillness is a help, but not essential or even always possible. Like a rider who sits deeper in her saddle when her horse increases his speed, we can embody a still attentiveness even in the midst of action. Like a rider sitting deep, it takes a bit of practice.

Melissa entered, and Diotima bid Socrates good night. Nestor remained, and Melissa sat down with the lyre and played Diotima's song of love, changing the music with grace-notes that deepened the most haunting lines. Socrates sank back in his chair. The music seemed to speak of his secret hopes and fears, to give him both pain and courage, so when Nestor turned to him, and asked him as the old heroes always did ask their guests, "My friend, tell me, I pray you, without forgetting anything, who are you and of what family?" he responded. As Melissa played, he quietly told Nestor about his mother and father, how he had journeyed to Samos to search for the secrets of the kosmos, and found he must first search for himself.

"Ah," said Nestor, looking pleased. "You set out to solve the mystery of your disappearance. Yes."

Socrates gave him a startled look. That was one way to put it. "Looking for myself," he said slowly, "I developed a logical method. It was a way to understand myself and how I should live." He remembered his happiness as he uncovered the promise of elenchus. "Unfortunately, it wasn't enough. I ran into a wall. I couldn't find a way through. That is why I am here."

"I see you have not been afraid of the truth," Nestor said, looking at him gravely. "I hope you will not be afraid to face the truth tomorrow."

He rose, and bid him good night, and left the hall behind Melissa. Socrates crossed the dark courtyard outside, and bedded down in the fragrant, rough hay in the big room where the horses slept. Listening to the quiet breathing of the two brothers and the horses, he felt as if he had traveled a long way from Athens, and the life he had known. Despite Nestor's warning he slept deeply and well. He was unaware that tomorrow he would have to face the stones. NEXT »

©2006 CATHERINE GLASS