Plato and South Asian yogic traditions espouse various soteriological goals – divinisation, nirvāṇa, the identity of ātman and brahman, and yogic aloneness (kaivalya) – but their prescribed methods for attaining them present striking similarities. In addition to right living and right beliefs, meditation and contemplation are valorised as essential means for the deconstruction of the empirical person. While the importance ascribed to such practices is widely recognised in South Asia, the prominent intellectualism of the Platonic dialogues and of Plato scholars has obscured the existential centrality of the practice of inwardness and tranquillity for philosophers who aspire to ‘become as like god as possible’ (Theaet. 176b1–2). The goal of this chapter is to highlight this dimension of the Platonic way of life by demonstrating affinities with South Asian meditative praxis.

Platonists and Indian yogins embrace a way of life that integrates cognitive and affective aspects of human nature on a path that eliminates ignorance and suffering through the purification and simplification of consciousness. In Pierre Hadot's formulation, Greek thinkers practised the art of living as

I shall begin with the general principles that underlie Indian yogic practices.