It is interesting to see parallels between Greek philosophers, our Rishis and Founders of Religions who directly experience, perceive, That Infinite Consciousness, the Singular Subject, the idea of One Omnipresent, infinite God and then try to express in simple words – I am that I am; Kingdom of God is within you; This SELF is Consciousness; That Thou Art, etc.!

Recent advances in AI have raised considerable concerns about the potential emergence of human-like consciousness in machines, which could lead to unforeseen consequences. It has undoubtedly sparked widespread and intense interest in studying consciousness across multiple disciplines, including philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology.

Scientists are still seeking to ‘Know’ Consciousness! They’ve yet to realize it isn’t an ‘object’ to be ‘known’ – it’s the singular SUBJECT, uninvolved WITNESS, which as Life, makes us conscious of everything, even of own body-mind!

Plato holds that the absolutely real Being, God, Truth, Reality and the Good are the same. Goodness is the ultimate Cause of all causes and that the unity of the Good is meaningful only when there is plurality, and that there can be no plurality without unity – Unity in Diversity! Philosophy is conceived by Plato to be the pursuit of the knowledge of the Idea of the Good in this rational, intelligently governed system of a moral and spiritual cosmos, maintained in perfect Order, Rtm based on cause-effect principle.

Goodness is thus equated with God, and Goodness includes all ideas of: Dharma, Good, Ethics, Morals, Values, Righteousness, Truth, Peace, Love, Bliss, as well as commitment to our respective duties (Swadharma), etc.
To Plato the Soul ‘cleansed’ is all ‘Idea and Reason’. Soul represents the memories of all our choices-actions and their consequences as impressed in our mind which causes all our present tendencies and choices. As Scientists now agree, it’s an Intelligent Universe that ensures that with our respective souls, we reap what we sow! Thus, goodness cleans our soul, and we feel freedom from attachment to body and intellective (mind) and directly experience that divine order from which the wellspring of Goodness and Beauty arises. We may even say that Beauty is the Authentic-Existents and Ugliness, evil, wrong is the Principle contrary to Existence: and the Ugly is also the primal evil; therefore, its contrary is at once good and beautiful, or is Good and Beauty: and hence the one method will discover to us the Beauty-Good and the Ugliness-Evil.

The ascent to goodness, God presupposes a thread of purification. The duty of the individual is to come back again to God (Re-gain, Religion; Re-unite, Yoga). The individual’s Fatherland is the God. Learning to be and do good gradually refines past impurities impressed in our Mind thru’ wrong, self-centered!

Plato realizes the importance of ‘Know Thyself’ and that Widom arises from the interiority, not from the outer Sense perception – we must engage in Inner seeking to know nature of our mind! To live in our inner authentic dimension, daily life skill practices can help us progressively diminish the influence of sense objects and enable us to return to our authentic purity – Our past ‘Memories’ are impurities which hinder us.

To Plato, philosophy is the ‘dear delight’, which aims at the knowledge of the Universal Being, Reality. Sense-perception cannot reveal the nature of Reality that enlivens our mind and makes us conscious, the knower!

To Plato, love of truth is aroused by the contemplation of the beautiful ideas. Contemplation of beauty is the way to the contemplation of Truth. Love of Truth and Beauty isn’t objectively existent; it doesn’t come from sense-experience! The constitution of beauty changes itself when the constitution of the perceiver of the beauty is changed in relation to the objective conditions

The love of Truth mentioned by Plato, which is said to bring about a dispassion for objects of sense is akin to the ‘nitya-anitya-vastu-viveka’, i.e. discrimination between the real, Unchanging existence and the unreal, ever-changing Jagat, world) as the precondition of real distaste for sense-objects.

It is this love of truth, devotion to the Eternal, that gives life and value to the sadhana, or spiritual practice undertaken by the seeker of knowledge. It is this, again, that raises the individual to the Universal by bringing about a total transfiguration in the individual.

Vedanta says, as does Plato, that this viveka (understanding), the higher discrimination, does not come through the senses but wells up from within the Soul when the mind is sufficiently purified by freedom from the lower appetites (desires). Viveka is a priori knowledge in a higher sense.

Knowledge, according to Plato, is the correspondence of Thought and Reality, or Being. The universal idea of Truth, goodness and beauty, for example, must have objects or realities corresponding to them.

Plato declares that knowledge of Eternal Being is true knowledge. This knowledge is identified with thought which alone may grasp the Eternal. True knowledge is conceptual knowledge. Lower, relative knowledge is correspondence of Thought and its Object, but in the higher, universal knowledge there is no correspondence but identity, oneness, for in universal knowledge of That Consciousness, the knower and the known are One – Vedanta.

While all Thought in the world of experience is tremendously influenced by the materials supplied by the senses. The unchangeable Eternal of Plato is the unchanging, immutable Reality, attained only thru’ direct experience, Self-realization of That, which Vedanta summarize in five profound statements: Consciousness is That. That Thou Art. This Self is That. I am That.

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