Philosophy Is the Medicine of the Mind

Cicero, Thomas Taylor, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Bhagavan Das · Living the Life Series · 15 pages

A fifteen-page compilation drawing on Cicero, Thomas Taylor, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Bhagavan Das, opened by an abstract that states the whole argument as continuous prose rather than as a list of headings. It is among the more recently revised files in the section, dated July 2024.

The abstract works from definitions outward. Wisdom is acquaintance with all divine and human affairs and knowledge of the cause of everything; virtue is the good of the mind, from which it follows that a happy life depends on virtue. Pain is named virtue's sharpest adversary, with pain and pleasure alike called trifling and effeminate sentiments peculiar to the lower self; fortitude is defined as fearless obedience to reason, and prudence as what teaches a good life and secures a happy one. The claim about purpose is unusually stark — that the aim of life is neither applause nor profit but merely to experience it on behalf of the silent observer within — and the practical discipline that follows is that the wise man, exercising authority over his lower self, opposes pain as he would an enemy, remaining indifferent to honour and dishonour. Cicero supplies the line the title comes from, that philosophy is the medicine of our souls. The second movement brings in the Indian term: frustration is called the end point of all outwardly-looking desires, and every frustration nurtures vairāgya — preliminary vairāgya being a mental U-turn and an infolding of consciousness, final vairāgya the actualisation that all is One. Veiling the eyes to external vision is called the first initiation and the first step on the renunciant path.

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