The typical path or method of the Pythagorean philosopher is three-fold; purgative, illuminative, and unitive. In the Pythagorean school the students were divided into groups, beginners listened to lectures on ethics, and practiced morality and austerities designed to help them gain control over, "stomach, sleep, lust and anger."(7) They were made to take mindful walks in the morning and they were taught the value of silence. The more advanced studied the reasoning sciences which we now call the Seven Liberal Arts. This was so that, through cognition and logic, they would come to the conviction that Union with God was the only way to escape the wheel of dissatisfaction and unhappiness they found themselves on. More importantly the student of Philosophy was taught meditation. This was called, "Contemplation of the One, or contemplating the Good."(8) There might be someone who would object to my calling Contemplation of the One, meditation, because contemplation is commonly defined as discursive rumination or analysis. I however challenge them to analyze the One. Discourse, nor logical analysis enters there. Using logic to know the One is like using a compass to get to the North Pole. It only takes you about as far as Chesapeake Bay and then it fails. Try to discursively ruminate on the One, you will only be able to say what the One is not, like Euclid describing the source and end of all Geometry, the point, "A point is that which has no part."(9) The One can only be contemplated in the pure silence of the mind.

The teachings of the Pythagorean philosophers are virtually identical with those schools of mysticism in the East. Pythagoras taught re-incarnation.(10) He also taught a concept which became known as Universal Friendship(11), which is identical with the Buddhist concept of Compassion for All Sentient Beings. He taught his followers to be vegetarians on the grounds of non-violence to animals and because meat eating inhibits mental silence(12). The Pythagoreans also practiced a meditation technique call the method of negation,(13) which is identical to the Neti, neti, technique taught in the Upanishads. Pythagorean teaching is so similar to the mysticism of India that the Yogi Harish Johari claims Pythagoras learned his wisdom in India(14), and another claims Pythagoras' name derives from the Indian, Pitar Guru.(15)

Through it's earliest definition, the explanations of it's early adherents, through it's practice and training, and through comparison to eastern schools of mysticism we see that Philosophy was meant to be mysticism. We can only speculate as to why it degenerated into logical reasoning alone. Perhaps when Christian priests replaced Philosophers as the theologians of the West, uninitiated yet educated people, reading the works of men like Plato and Aristotle assumed that logical reasoning was the whole of Philosophy. This a position that would doubtless be encouraged by a Church that could abide no rivals. Whatever the cause, logical reasoning is certainly a pretty toy for the intellectually active, but it always falls short of the Real. Logical reasoning, however, like the harmonies of music and the principles of geometry, could not be dissonant with the Universal Symphony, so the Philosopher uses it as a tool to assist the student to love and strive toward the Good, but it was never intended to be the whole of Philosophy. The true Philosopher is a lover with a singular focus, who sells all that he has to buy a field in which is a pearl that is the Good. He strives with all his might, mind and soul for union with Absolute Reality, he is a Mystic.
1. Symposium 205d.
2. Symposium 205a.
3. Iamblichus: The Exhortation to Philosophy. pp121.
4. ibid.
5. Fragments of Heraclitus.
6. The Hymns of Orpheus. Trans. Thomas Taylor. pp30
7. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and library. Trans. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. pp 76-82 and 163.
8. Plotinus: Enneads. Trans. Stephen MacKenna pp534.
9. Euclid. The Thirteen Books of the Elements. pp 1.
10. Iamblichus: The Life of Pythagoras. Ch 14. Also see. Diogenes Laertius: The Life of Pythagoras. Ch 4.
11. Iamblichus: The Life of Pythagoras. Ch. 33.
12. Plutarch: Moralia. On Abstinence from Animals Flesh.
13. Dionysius the Areopagite: The Mystical Theology. (This writer is considered a Neo-Platonic Christian, which is a sub-set of Pythagorean.)
14. Harish Johari. Leela. pp. 22
15. Introduction to the Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Concord Grove Press.

Written by James McKinnon