I recently had a very interesting encounter with a sophist, which was an eye-opening lesson for me. After the conversation, I went back home and actually meditated and journaled on it to gain further insights on human thinking and processing of logic. Phew.

I have to admit, the ignorant arrogance was quite triggering for me but I kept my composure as I knew there’s something to observe and learn here. At the same time, I stood my ground and threw some unanswerable questions in an attempt to make them think, to no avail. Very triggering, haha. I knew it was time for me to do some inner work but this blog is not about that. 

So what is Sophistry?

It is essentially a fallacious and deceptive argument, reasoned in a clever and logical way. You may know that what they are saying is absolutely untrue, factually, literally, technically, logically etc., but their organization and presentation of the argument are so well fabricated that you are unable to prove them wrong. 

How to identify a sophist?

Is anyone who can argue with logic and evidence and be technically right and sound clever a sophist? 

No. The difference between a sophist(deceiver) and a non-sophist(truth-teller) is the fine line of discernment, which would be missing in the former. In the encounter I was talking about, the sophist was a hypocrite, judgmental, bad listener, had zero discernment, had done no inner work or shadow work, a completely unconscious person. Only an unconscious person can be a proper sophist.

Most of these people are on auto-pilot programming and take on beliefs of another rather than through the journey of self-awareness and self-exploration that leads to their alignment with their higher self, which gives one access to real information and intelligence. This real information is always universally true and coincides with ALL truths. However, most humans are running on lower intelligence and the higher mind is silent and cannot communicate with them.

The Conversation

The conversation at the beginning was very normal, mostly small talk as I don’t engage in deep conversations with people who don’t carry the energy of depth. HOWEVER, before I knew it, the conversation had turned to God, and belief systems. I was asked about mine, out of what at the time I felt was curiosity, but little did I know that the sophist was gathering data to use it to curate deceptive arguments. Well, my bad. I need stronger boundaries to protect my knowledge from parasitic energies. 

In short, I explained that I don’t believe in deity Gods but the Law of One God where all of us are manifestations of God because we manifested ourselves from the Universal spirit into this lower plane of existence.

The sophist, very interestingly and wildly, concluded that I’m very narrow-minded. Well that’s totally wild because to be  narrow-minded would be to stick to something in the microcosm and deny the macrocosm(or vice versa) or have stubborn beliefs only restricted to our visible reality. He described that everyone believes that their beliefs are right. I agreed. That is true(but can be dissected further with discernment to arrive at a deeper truth, but I kept this to myself). 

He went on to explain how certain communities are brainwashed into thinking that their God is the only God and anyone who doesn’t follow or believe that must be eradicated from this world. He was referring to the conditioning which makes a person think that their beliefs are right. 

I agreed, because that indeed is true.

I then stated the example of René Descartes. He understood that we all have these belief systems and if left unverified, they could be false and we wouldn’t even know whether they’re actually true or not, because it’s just easier to believe what we already do than to doubt it. But Descartes evaluated all his beliefs through a method called methodical doubt. So he decided to disbelieve everything temporarily. His analogy was: Imagine our beliefs were like apples in a basket. If there’s a rotten one hidden somewhere, it could infect all the other healthy apples as well. So the only way was to take all of them out of the basket, and inspect each one by one and put it back into the basket upon passing the quality check. So he did that and took back in only those apples or beliefs that were true without a doubt.

Now of course, there’s more to learn about the verification process and other things. But here, that’s not the point. 

If you ask me what would be my takeaway just from the above paragraph alone about Descartes, it would be that I love what he did. It takes a lot of effort to scan our own beliefs and be open to being wrong, because the priority is not to be right but to know the ultimate truth. The priority is not one’s opinions, but to know THE truth. That’s what all of us should be doing, through introspection, inner work, and shadow work.

Okay, now, the sophist immediately stopped me after the apple analogy. He said, “…but still he ended up believing his previous beliefs.”. I found this astonishing and was honestly spellbound. 

He didn’t care about the fact that Descartes made an attempt to verify his beliefs and that in that process he may have eliminated the ones he found to be false. The only thing he could see was that ultimately Descartes ended up putting back healthy apples. I was blown away by the lack of discernment. But still, it takes a lot of false or adulterated intelligence to be a sophist, I must admit. 

I did try to hint that if he thought that everyone has their own beliefs that they “believe” to be right(which means it can be prone to fallacy), then doesn’t he and his beliefs too come under the same category? He disagreed. He believes that everyone but him is programmed and that him being aware of this, makes his beliefs right somehow. Brilliant modern sophistry right there. Well this wasn’t sophistry alone but a bit of arrogance of the ego as well. I was completely fascinated.

Of course, I did not continue the conversation further because I realized that this wasn’t even a conversation of curiosity or sharing, but an ignorant attack. 

However, it gave me a lot to think about and revealed a lot about the endless types of thinking processes that are out there governing the human mind, which are blocking us all from seeing the real truth. The universal truth that nobody can deny. The truth of the universe. The truth of US.

Much love and gratitude!