How Plato and Pythagoras Can Save Your Life: The Ancient Greek Prescription for Health and Happiness

A former New York City nightclub owner and drug abuser, Kardaras is a psychology professor who turned his life around through immersion in ancient Greek philosophy. He introduces readers to some key ideas of the "rational mystics" Pythagoras and Plato, to show how to achieve a more holistic sense of well-being. Many readers will be familiar with Plato's theory of ideal forms, but Kardaras does readers a service by delving into the thought of Pythagoras: a "healthy mind, body, and spirit" through exercise, strict diet, and contemplating "math, music, cosmology, and philosophy." In this vein Kardaras offers meditative exercises leading to expanded consciousness. But some are a stretch ("try and conceptualize the time of the Big Bang"). Clear and friendly, if at times meandering, the book explores such concepts as Aquinas's five proofs for God's existence, and how modern society has killed the notion of a "soul." Kardaras's attempt toward the book's end to articulate a belief in cosmic monism—"we are part of the universal consciousness"—will be welcome to those spiritually and mystically inclined, though it may be too rarefied for others. (Apr.)