Pythagoras and the mystic Orient

We welcome this opportunity to publish a further essay from Prof Peter Hubral, professor of applied geophysics at Karlsruhe University, whose personal intellectual quest extends well beyond geoscience to the evolution of modern scientific thought and the search for wisdom. This article is based on a talk delivered in March to the Emirate Society of Geoscientists (ESG) and the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) in Abu Dhabi. Pythagoras (570-ca. 546 BCE) was a scientist and a sage. He was apparently born in Syria and travelled through the Middle East from where he brought knowledge and wisdom to the West. Though there is nothing written from Pythagoras himself, there are many references made about him and his teachings by philosophers and sages, who followed his footsteps. They allow us to reconstruct a personal profile about him and his doctrine. According to this, he accepted that humans, as part of their cultural evolution, suffer a certain loss of soul. This appears to result from an inner struggle between the mind dedicated to gaining knowledge and the soul required to gain wisdom. Pythagoras and his followers appear to have known what are today little understood ways of recovering the loss of soul in order to lead a harmonious life with oneself, others and nature. At a time like ours, where the relationship between the East and the West is tense, it is satisfying to know that there existed at one time people like Pythagoras, who not only have united the East with the West culturally, but have inspired soul searchers through the centuries from both parts of the world. Pythagoras had the reputation that he cultivated - with the help of Oriental mysticism - a harmonious relationship between mind and soul in himself and his students. The mind is for me that spiritual part in us, which is engaged with the outside world and the soul is that part related to our inner self. To the mind I count such functions as rationality, inductive thinking, will, control, study and demonstration. To the soul I count, for instance, reason, hope, love, emotion, intuition, creativity and tolerance.