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Plato’s Dialogues: Path to Initiation For millennia, hundreds of books have been written on Plato’s dialogues and philosophy. In this book, Carol Dunn makes the case that the major modern scholars interpret Plato with an overwhelming focus on understanding the rational content of the dialogues, but omit or neglect the project of their purpose. Once they have mined the individual dialogues for their meaning, they neglect to share what readers can or should do with the knowledge gained from their investigations. The author makes the case that Plato is engaged not only in thinking but also, and more important, in doing—that what we do with the knowledge is crucial, because it can determine the meaning and purpose of our own life. She saw that he was not merely engaging in rational philosophical discussion, but that the dialogues of Plato, especially up to the Republic, embody the Socratic exhortation for each individual to “take care for the soul.” The dialogues therefore embody both a rational philosophy and a system of spiritual/religious principles and doctrines whose purpose is to lay out—in a public forum—the path a true disciple needs to take to have a personal and direct experience of spiritual illumination, or enlightenment. This book is not just for scholars of Plato’s philosophy, but for anyone who wishes to penetrate an ancient, though largely overlooked, path to initiation. C O N T E N T S: Introduction PART ONE The First Stage: Definition of the Virtues The Second Stage: Higher Spiritual Teachings The Third Stage: Mystic Teachings The Republic Transcendence and Immanence PART TWO Plato and Pythagoras Commentary: Two-Principle Theory Was Number Immanent for Pythagoras? Comparison of Plato and Pythagoras PART THREE Tracing the Source of those “Foreign” Doctrines Conclusions About the Author CAROL DUNN was born in England and moved to the U.S., where she obtained a BA in Philosophy and Art History, and an MA in Philosophy from the City University of New York. Throughout that time, she maintained a serious interest in Eastern metaphysics and studied various aspects of New Age spirituality. Her first book, Plato’s Dialogues: Path to Initiation, suggests that Plato’s dialogues—a testimony to rational thought—contain a subtext that reveals a step-by-step pathway to higher knowledge and eventual initiation into the mysteries. Carol passed away on May 21, 2020. She was working on her third book, about showing the unity of different pathways to union with God.
