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Main Index
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authenticity. It will fight all that is phony and pseudo.
Socrates was given the alternative by the court that if he left Athens and promised never to come back to Athens then they could allow him to go and he would not be sentenced to death. He refused. The judge asked, 'Why? Don't you want to save your life?'
He said, 'The same thing will happen wherever I go, I will have to go through the same process, because I will be doing the same thing there. And sooner or later they will sentence me to death. So what is the point? And in this old age going to another place and starting from scratch... it is better to die here and die a noble death. I will not compromise. Life and death are not as important as my respect for truth.'
The magistrate felt sorry -- he must have been a compassionate man -- but because all the respectable citizens of Athens were against Socrates, the majority were against this man, he had to punish him. He gave him another alternative. He said, 'Then you can live in Athens. I can see you are old and to go and live in some other place now will be difficult for you. You can live in Athens, but promise me that you will stop talking about truth.'
He said, 'That is impossible. Then what is the point of living at all if I cannot even talk about truth? Not only will I talk about truth I will live truth. I cannot do anything else. Once you know the truth you have to say it, you have to live it because you are it. Knowing it one becomes it.'
That's what the Upanishads say: Knowing it one becomes it.
Socrates said, 'Don't be worried about me. You just do your duty and let me do my work. If I live then I have to sing my song. And I cannot dance to anybody else's tune, I will create my own music and I will live my own life. And whatsoever the price I have to pay for it I am ready to pay. Even if life has to be taken away, it's perfectly okay, I am happy about it, in fact, tremendously joyous because I can feel great respect for myself. I am dying a noble death for truth. Truth is a higher value than life itself. A life without truth is not life, it is vegetating.'
Socrates was given poison. And that has been
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