“Now, no one goes willingly toward the bad or what he believes to be bad; neither is it in human nature, so it seems, to want to go toward what one believes to be bad instead of to the good. And when he is forced to choose between one of two bad things, no one will choose the greater if he is able to choose the lesser.” Plato, Protagoras 358d

Each “level” of the human soul has its own Good. The Good of the lower soul is Pleasure, and the evil of the lower soul is Pain. The Good of the middle soul is Power, and the evil of the middle soul is Weakness. But the Good of the higher soul is Wisdom which culminates in union with the real Good of all reality.

Therefore, you will always pursue the Good corresponding to the level of soul you are most identified with. As you continue to walk the lantern lit path of wisdom, your Good will change as your soul elevates towards the divine realm.

For [animals], it is enough merely to eat, drink, take rest and procreate, and perform such other functions as are appropriate to each, whereas for ourselves, who have been further endowed with the faculty of understanding, that is no longer enough, but unless we act in a methodical and orderly fashion, and in accordance with our own specific nature and constitution, we shall no longer attain our proper end. For in so far as beings have different constitutions, their works and their ends will differ too. So where a being's constitution is adapted for use alone, mere use suffices; but where a being also has the capacity to understand that use, unless that capacity be properly exercised in addition, he will never attain his end. What of the animals? God has constituted each according to its intended purpose, one to be eaten, another to be used in the fields, another to produce cheese, and another for some comparable use; and to be able to perform these functions, how is it necessary for them to be able to understand impressions and be capable of distinguishing between them? But God has brought the human race into the world to be a spectator of himself and of his works, and not merely to observe them, but also to interpret them. It is thus shameful for a human being to begin and end where the irrational animals do. Rather, he should start off where they do and end where nature ended with regard to ourselves. Now it ended with contemplation, and understanding, and a way of life that is in harmony with nature. Take care, then, that you don't die without having contemplated these realities.

Epictetus, Discourses 1.6

Asceticism often brings to mind very extreme images, but we can get an accurate sense of the real meaning of asceticism by looking at the etymology of the word.

The word “ascetic” ultimately derives from the ancient Greek word “askein,” which means “to train for athletic competition.”

Therefore, genuine asceticism is spiritual exercise, with the aim of gaining mastery over your impulses and appetites. Just as you lift weights to become stronger and healthier, you should practice asceticism to strengthen your soul.

Asceticism does not need to be (and shouldn’t be) extreme. It can be as simple as abstaining from pornography, eating only enough food to be healthy and no more, and the like. Of course, you know your own vices best and should find ascetic practices that aid you in your most problematic areas.

Just as with physical exercise, the heavier the weight, the greater the benefit. But asceticism should never be taken to the point of serious bodily harm, and it certainly should not have masochistic undertones. Remember, Plato instructs us (in the Timaeus) to be balanced physically and mentally!

Another common misconception is that asceticism means that enjoying things is bad. No, it is exercise for the soul, nothing more. It is perfectly fine to enjoy pleasant things, but you should never be a slave to pleasant things. Asceticism helps you break free of any chains you might have that are keeping you enslaved.

If you choose to take on an ascetic practice, you can use this guide as a tool along the way.

If you wish your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you’re a fool because you wish things that aren’t up to you to be up to you and alien things to be your own. Likewise, if you wish your slave not to go wrong, you’re an idiot because you wish vice not to be vice but something else. But if you wish not to fail to attain what you desire, this you can do. So practice what you can do.

Epictetus, The Handbook 14

“But invocations,” the objection goes, “are addressed to the gods as if they were subject to external influence, so that it is not only daemons that are thus subject, but also the gods.” In fact, however, your assumption, (dear Porphyry), is not correct. For the illumination that comes about as a result of invocations that reveal and will themselves, and is far removed from being drawn down by force, but rather proceeds to manifestation by reason of its own divine energy and perfection, is as far superior to (human) voluntary motion as the divine will of the Good is to the life of ordinary deliberation and choice. It is by virtue of such will, then, that the gods in their benevolence and graciousness unstintingly shed their light upon theurgists, summoning up their souls to themselves and orchestrating their union with them, accustoming them, even while still in the body, to detach themselves from their bodies, and to turn themselves towards their eternal and intelligible first principle.

- Iamblichus

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"I think that, if there is anything beautiful besides the Beautiful itself, it is beautiful for no other reason than that it shares in that Beautiful, and I say so with everything. … I no longer understand or recognize those other sophisticated causes, and if someone tells me that a thing is beautiful because it has a bright color or shape or any such thing, I ignore these other reasons—for all these confuse me—but I simply, naively and perhaps foolishly cling to this, that nothing else makes it beautiful other than the presence of, or the sharing in, or however you may describe its relationship to that Beautiful we mentioned, for I will not insist on the precise nature of the relationship, but that all beautiful things are beautiful by the Beautiful. That, I think, is the safest answer I can give myself or anyone else. And if I stick to this I think I shall never fall into error. This is the safe answer for me or anyone else to give, namely, that it is through Beauty that beautiful things are made beautiful. Or do you not think so too?"

Plato, Phaedo 100c-e

Since the roots of our natures are established in divinity, from which also we are produced, we should tenaciously adhere to our root; for streams also of water, and other offspring of the earth, when their roots are cut off become rotten and dry.

The Pythagorean Sentences of Demophilus

There are, as we have said many times now, three distinct types of soul that reside within us, each with its own motions. So now too, we must say in the same vein, as briefly as we can, that any type which is idle and keeps its motions inactive cannot but become very weak, while one that keeps exercising becomes very strong. And so we must keep watch to make sure that their motions remain proportionate to each other.

Now we ought to think of the most sovereign part of our soul as god's gift to us, given to be our guiding spirit. This, of course, is the type of soul that, as we maintain, resides in the top part of our bodies. It raises us up away from the earth and toward what is akin to us in heaven, as though we are plants grown not from the earth but from heaven. In saying this, we speak absolutely correctly. For it is from heaven, the place from which our souls were originally born, that the divine part suspends our head, i.e., our root, and so keeps our whole body erect. So if a man has become absorbed in his appetites or his ambitions and takes great pain to further them, all his thoughts are bound to become merely mortal. And so far as it is at all possible for a man to become thoroughly mortal, he cannot help but fully succeed in this, seeing that he has cultivated his mortality all along. On the other hand, if a man has seriously devoted himself to the love of learning and to true wisdom, if he has exercised these aspects of himself above all, then there is absolutely no way that his thoughts can fail to be immortal and divine, should truth come within his grasp. And to the extent that human nature can partake of immortality, he can in no way fail to achieve this: constantly caring for his divine part as he does, keeping well-ordered the guiding spirit that lives within him, he must indeed be supremely happy.

Plato, Timaeus 90a-c

For when we are entirely ignorant of what we are, we will also be ignorant of what we show concern for, showing concern for everything rather than ourselves for whom we should show the chief concern. If that which uses the body is the soul, and the body in respect to the soul occupies the category of an instrument, and all other things have been discovered for the sake of the instrument to help its fluctuating nature, clearly our chief and first concern should be for that which leads and comes first, and our secondary concern for that which comes second. Hence the wise man will not be careless of his health, not because he thinks the body is pre-eminent, but because he instructs it for the use of the soul, so that it may obey without hindrance the soul’s functions; and in the third place he will take care of the third category of things, managing externals for the preservation of the instrument. Therefore he will take care of the soul first, perhaps even exclusively, given that the care shown for things after the soul is directed towards its progress.

Hierocles of Alexandria, Commentary on the Golden Verses

Yet when the soul leaves the light of the soul behind,
you must go to the right thiasos, keeping everything very well.
Hail, after having had an experience such as you never had before.
You have been born a god, from the man that you were. A kid, you
fell into the milk.
Hail, hail; take the path to the right
towards the sacred meadows and groves of Persephone.

- L8 Tablet from Thurii, 4th cent. B.C., Naples Museum; 1st. ed. Fio relli (1879) 329 f.

In this world [sc. the soul] has no knowledge, except when it reaches the moment of death. It then undergoes an experience like that of those who participate in the great initiations. This is why they resemble each other so much, both in word [sc. ‘to die’ and ‘to be initiated’) and in action. First there is a wandering without direction, the tiring turns and running about in the darkness with the suspicion that they are never going to end, and then, before one reaches the actual end, all the terrors, shudders, trembling, sweat, and confusion. From here, however, a wonderful light comes to greet him, and he is received by pure places and meadows, full of sounds, dances, and the solemnity of sacred words and sacred visions. Once he has had his fill of this and has been initiated, he becomes free and walks as a free man. Crowned, he celebrates the mysteries and in the company of holy and pure men, he sees from there the uninitiated, impure crowd of living beings, in the midst of the mud and the darkness, trampling and pushing one another, persisting in the fear of death and the union of the malevolent, for lack of faith in the good things that are there.

- Plutarch

The biggest puzzle arising is that comprehension of the One is neither by scientific understanding nor by intellection, as it is in the case of other intelligibles. It corresponds rather to a presence which is better than scientific understanding. But the soul undergoes a departure from its unity and the fact that it is not altogether a unity, whenever it attains scientific understanding. For scientific understanding involves an account, and an account is multiple. The soul, then, passes by the One when it falls into number and multiplicity. So, it should run above scientific understanding, and in no way exit from its unity, and should depart from scientific understanding, and the objects of scientific understanding, indeed all else, even from the vision of Beauty. For everything beautiful is posterior to the One, and comes from it, just as all daylight comes from the sun.

Plotinus, 6.9.4

For the soul when looking at things posterior to herself, beholds the shadows and images of beings, but when she converts herself to herself she evolves her own essence, and the reasons which she contains. And at first indeed, she only as it were beholds herself; but, when she penetrates more profoundly into the knowledge of herself, she finds in herself both intellect, and the orders of beings. When however, she proceeds into her interior recesses, and into the adytum as it were of the soul, she perceives with her eye closed, the genius of the Gods, and the unities of beings. For all things are in us psychically, and through this we are naturally capable of knowing all things, by exciting the powers and the images of wholes which we contain.

Proclus, Theology of Plato Book 1 Chapter 3

First, he possessed an extreme delicacy of the senses, which may be called 'corporeal wisdom,' especially of our noblest senses, sight and hearing, which were given by the gods to man so that he might devote himself to philosophy, and to enjoy the sweetness of well-being. Our philosopher preserved them intact his life-long.

Secondly, his was a most robust constitution, which resisted the extremes of heat and cold, and which remained unaffected by irregularities, by his neglect of food, by excess of work by day and night, when occupied in prayers, pouring over scientific books, writing, conversing familiarly with his friends,----and all that so continuously as if each was his only occupation. Such power might justly be called corporeal bravery.

The third bodily quality he possessed is comparable to temperance, to which is properly related handsomeness. For as the former consists in the harmony and mutual agreement of the faculties of the soul, so the latter physical beauty may be discovered in a certain symmetry of its organic members. His appearance was most agreeable, for not only did he possess the beauty of just proportions, but from his soul exuded a certain living light, or miraculous efflorescence which shone over his whole body, and which is quite indescribable. ...

His fourth bodily virtue was health, which is often compared to justice in the soul. ...

So profoundly had this health been rooted in Proclus ever since his birth, that he was able to tell how many times he had been sick, which was twice or thrice during seventy-five completed years. Indeed, so true is this that during his last sickness he did not recognize his symptoms, so rarely had he felt them.

Marinus, Life of Proclus

Circumstances may make you treat this subject either light-heartedly or seriously; in either case you ought to bear in mind that when male and female come together in order to have a child, the pleasure they experience seems to arise entirely naturally. But homosexual intercourse and lesbianism seem to be unnatural crimes of the first rank, and are committed because men and women cannot control their desire for pleasure.

Plato, Laws 636c

Modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.

Werner Heisenberg, a pioneer of quantum physics

O gods, don’t let me savor pleasures to excess,
but put a limit onto them, in case there comes
from them some evil to my body or my soul.
Don’t let me be insatiable for resources,
but measured, and in those things that the body needs
be moderate, so independence I enjoy.
Don’t let me be enslaved to false and empty words,
but let me judge as useful only those of them
that bring divine and genuine excellence.

Plethon, Book of Laws Hymn 23

Incense: storax
I call Proteus, keeper of the keys
of the sea, the first born, who has revealed
the origin of all nature, changing
holy matter into many different
forms. All-honored, great counselor, who knows
what is, what was, and what will be hereafter.
For he holds everything himself; and he
can change himself, unlike some other gods,
who have their thrones on snowy Olympos
and fly through the air, over land and sea.
For nature first placed everything in him,
Proteus; Father, come to these mystic
rites with your holy foresight; send a good
end to a life rich in accomplishments.

Orphic Hymn For Proteus

So, I draw this distinction: On one side are those you just now called lovers of sights, lovers of crafts, and practical people; on the other side are those we are now arguing about and whom one would alone call philosophers.

How do you mean?

The lovers of sights and sounds like beautiful sounds, colors, shapes, and everything fashioned out of them, but their thought is unable to see and embrace the nature of the beautiful itself.

That's for sure.

In fact, there are very few people who would be able to reach the beautiful itself and see it by itself. Isn't that so?

Certainly.

What about someone who believes in beautiful things, but doesn't believe in the beautiful itself and isn't able to follow anyone who could lead him to the knowledge of it? Don't you think he is living in a dream rather than a wakened state? Isn't this dreaming: whether asleep or awake, to think that a likeness is not a likeness but rather the thing itself that it is like?

I certainly think that someone who does that is dreaming.

But someone who, to take the opposite case, believes in the beautiful itself, can see both it and the things that participate in it and doesn't believe that the participants are it or that it itself is the participants - is he living in a dream or is he awake?

He's very much awake.

Plato, Republic 475e - 476d

I have long been surprised at my own wisdom - and doubtful of it, too. That's why I think it's necessary to keep re-investigating whatever I say, since self-deception is the worst thing of all. How could it not be terrible, indeed, when the deceiver never deserts you even for an instant but is always right there with you? Therefore, I think we have to turn back frequently to what we've already said, in order to test it by looking at it "backwards and forwards simultaneously," as [Homer] puts it.

Plato, Cratylus 428d