Sophistry

A Sophist is somebody who is (seeking to become) aligned with (or attuned to) reality. Essential to understanding the concept of a Sophist is that aligning oneself to reality is not just an intellectual matter of good understanding, but something that involves the whole character of a person.

In principle it is possible to become a Sophist as a result of self-guided struggle for attunement and the experiences one naturally receives in life. However in practice few people are able achieve this without other people helping them by providing experiences especially designed to help the process along. In most cases also a person may not be able to progress properly without the help of a personal teacher who can see what they are particularly needing at each point in time, and provides it for them.

Sophistry is what we call the practices that help a person along the road to becoming a Sophist.

There have been many Sophists throughout human history, although at any one time the number of Sophists has been only a small proportion of the population. However it is important that there exist Sophists in a human population and that they have influence there. For as it is only Sophists who are fully attuned to the nature of existence it is only they who are able to know what is the action that the population needs to take to make life better for themselves and the world.

Sophistry is about developing a character that is attuned to the essential nature of existence as far as this is unchanging, and which is able easily to attune to the essential nature of particular situations as they arise.

Important to the Sophist understanding is that essential value can be generated by all souls (“everybody’s happiness is important”), yet in a natural state people will consider their own well being and those they identify with as of higher importance than that of everybody else. Also in a natural state emotions such as anger, fear and hatred will cause a person to pay less attention to the well-being of others who are the object of such emotions.

Sophistry works to challenge the natural selfish attitudes of a person, and to encourage them to see the intrinsic value of all people and creatures. (i.e. that it is part of the nature of all living creatures to create value as they live – something we might describe as them being happy or joyful or acting with purpose)

Some Sophist teachers encourages us to love all creation – the teacher will encourage the emotion of love within us and discourages those of anger, fear and hatred. They will discourage purely personal attachments and encourage us to attach our affections to all. (N.B. An alternative path discourages all attachments and emotions including love but fosters a zeal to do what is right.)A Sophist may have a basic desire to help the living being, but this is of little use unless they are also properly prepared to be able to do so.

So the next important feature of Sophistry is the development of the ability to discern the truth of a situation . We are talking about the ability of a person to produce a mental map of a situation which helps them to discern the pattern of chains of cause and effect. A person’s understanding of the nature of the world depends partly on their own direct experience of it, and partly on reports they have heard from other people. As a person will only have a direct experience of a small part of the world, in fact reports from other people are the main source of information. In addition it is the nature of most people to believe reports from others which seem to be authoritative even when it runs counter to their own experience. A minority of people have a nature that they trust their own experience and mental construction more than that from others.

Also when evaluating a situation a person will have a lot of pre-conceived assumptions (blind attachment to ideas) which shape they way they see things. For instance if a person has preconceived assumptions that would make it impossible for something to happen then they will find it difficult to see things clearly if what they think is impossible to happen is actually happening.

Sophistry seeks to bring people’s assumptions into consciousness – so that they are no longer blindly attached to them and become more flexible in their thinking – and more open to new ways of looking at things.

With these two steps in Sophistry a person will have a desire to help the souls of the world, and the ability to develop a map of the workings of the world, however these still will not be enough if they cannot recognise activities which are creating value from those which are not.

So the last important feature of Sophistry considered here is to develop a person’s ability to recognise intuitively activities which are creating essential value. Now what we call essential value is the good flow of the spirit – and this happens best when the soul or souls in interaction with each other are acting in a rhythmic or harmonious way.

Harmony presents itself to us as beauty. So part of Sophistry is to foster our ability to recognise and appreciate beauty – and with the greater sensitivity the better. A way to do this is simply to expose people to beautiful things, such as beautiful music or beautiful architecture and let the experience sink into them.

October 2009 CE / 4009 HE