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a profound level. In the dialogues recorded by Plato, the conversation halts, digresses to another subject, and returns to the original idea in a way that prevents it from becoming dogmatic. It was essential that at each stage of the debate, Socrates and his interlocutors maintain a disciplined, openhearted accord.
    Because the Socratic dialogue was experienced as an initiation
(myesis)
, Plato used the language of the Mysteries to describe its effect on people. Socrates once said that, like his mother, he was a midwife whose task was to help his interlocutor engender a new self. 42 Like any good initiation, a successful dialogue should lead to
ekstasis:
by learning to inhabit each other’s point of view, the conversationalists were taken beyond themselves. Anybody who entered into dialogue with Socrates had to be willing to change; he had to have faith (
pistis
) that Socrates would guide him through the initial vertigo of
aporia
in such a way that he found pleasure in it. At the end of this intellectual ritual, if he had responded honestly and generously, the initiate would have become a philosopher, somebody who realized that he lacked wisdom, longed for it, but knew that he was not what he ought to be. Like a
mystes
, he had become “a stranger to himself.” This relentless search for wisdom made a philosopher
atopos
, “unclassifiable.” That was why Socrates was not like other people; he did not care about money or advancement and was not even concerned about his own security.
    In the
Symposium
, Plato made Socrates describe his quest for wisdom as a love affair that grasped the seeker’s entire being until he achieved an
ekstasis
that was an ascent, stage by stage, to a higher stateof being. If the philosopher surrendered himself to an “unstinting love of wisdom,” he would acquire joyous knowledge of a beauty that went beyond finite beings because it was being itself: “It always
is
and neither comes to be nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes.” 43 It was not confined to
    one idea or one kind of knowledge. It is not anywhere in another thing, as in an animal, or in earth, or in heaven, or in anything else, but itself by itself with itself, it is always one in form; and all the other beautiful things share in that in such a way that when these others come to be or pass away, this does not become the least bit smaller or greater nor suffer any change. 44
    It was “absolute, pure, unmixed, unique, eternal” 45 —like Brahman, Nirvana, or God. Wisdom transformed the philosopher so that he himself enjoyed a measure of divinity. “The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given birth to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.” 46
    As Socrates finished this moving explanation, Alcibiades burst in upon the company and, his tongue loosened by drink, described the extraordinary effect Socrates had upon him. He might be as ugly as a satyr, but he was like the popular effigies of the satyr Silenus that had a tiny statue of a god inside. He was like the satyr Marsyas, whose music propelled an audience into a tranced yearning for union with the gods, except that Socrates did not need a musical instrument because his words alone stirred people to the depths. He had made Alcibiades aware of how deficient he was in wisdom and how lacking in self-knowledge: “He always traps me, you see, and he makes me admit that my political career is a waste of time, while all that matters is just what I most neglect: my personal shortcomings, which cry out for the closest attention.” 47 He tried to stop his ears against Socrates’ imperative summons to virtue but simply could not keep away from him. “I swear to you, the moment he starts to speak, I am beside myself: my heart starts leaping in my chest, the tears come streaming down my face.” The
logoi
of Socrates filled him with the same kind of “frenzy” as the Mysteries of Dionysus; the listener felt