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The Quest of the Overself – Paul Brunton

Socrates himself practised methods of absorbed meditation which Patanjali's doctrine of direct contemplation plainly inculcated.  Both culminated in the trance state.  Socrates demonstrated this personally by passing at times into a contemplative trance.

Once he was walking with his friend Aristodemus to a banquet.  He lagged behind in a fit of abstraction, fixing the mind on himself, and Aristodemus arrived without him.  A servant was sent back to look for the sage, but came and reported that Socrates stood fixed in the portico of a house and did not answer when called.

'Let him alone' said Aristodemus 'this is the way he has of retiring at times and standing wherever he may chance'.

Socrates arrived later.

Again, Alcibiades mentions that on one occasion, during a military campaign, Socrates was found by a soldier standing still in one place where he had been since early dawn, fixed in profound meditation.  At noon attention was drawn to him and the wondering crowd thereafter watched the sun go down but Socrates still kept to his trance.

There he stood all night and at break of day he offered up a prayer to the sun and thus returned to normal activity.