How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Something kept me from telling her about Socrates. He was of another world, a world in which she had no part. How could she understand when I couldn't even fathom what was happening to me? (P.281)
Poor Dan. For years, he divides his world with Socrates from everybody else. Dan talks about how the discipline Socrates teaches him ruins his social life. We might all be familiar with that: where you change your beliefs or choices so drastically that you no longer fit in with your old friends. It's tough. Poor Dan.
Quote #5
After that, when I wasn't cleaning toilets, I was learning new and more frustrating exercises, like meditating on internal sounds until I could hear several at once. One night, as I practiced that exercise, I found myself drawn into a state of profound peace unlike any I'd known before. For a period of time—I don't know how long—I felt as if I was out of my body. This marked the first time that my own efforts and energy resulted in a paranormal experience; I hadn't needed Soc's fingers pressing into my head, or hypnosis, or whatever he'd done.
Excited, I told him about it. Instead of congratulating me, he said, "Don't get distracted by your experiences. Experiences come and go [...] Meditate all day, if you like; hear sounds and see lights, or see sounds and hear lights. But don't get seduced by experience. Let it all go!" (4.310-11)
By this time, Dan's made some considerable progress in his training. His difficult meditation exercise brings him far-out experiences, paranormal realities. But as usual, Socrates makes the point that he is to become attached to none of it. Weirdnesses of reality, like everything else, are simply passing, unimportant phenomena.
Quote #6
"Every infant lives in a bright Garden where everything is sensed directly, without the veils of thought—free of beliefs, interpretation, and judgments.
You "fell" from grace when you began thinking, about—when you became a namer and a knower." (6.21-22)
Socrates contrasts the reality of infants, who perceive the world without thoughts mucking up their experience, with the reality of most adults, who have lost that bliss due to the mind. Of course, one of the goals of the discipline Socrates teaches Dan throughout the book is to recapture child-like innocence.