9 - Plato's allegory of the cave
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We,The People, are not happy
It was 23 centuries ago that Plato’s wrote his famous “Allegory of the cave”. He was concerned with the influence of education on our lives. We only have to replace ’education’ with ‘consciousness’ and Palto’s allegory would still applies to our 21st century.
Plato imagined people who spent all their life in a cave. All they can do is to watch shadows on the wall in front of them. The shadows are ‘their reality’. One day, one of them is set free and can leave the cave. He discovers the outside world. He discovers a new reality, a new freedom and a new consciousness.
It seems (to us and today) that freedom and consciousness come together. We cannot blame the people in the cave for not being conscious of a freedom that they never experienced. We are conscious of freedom when we experience it.
We have a similar experience today when the scientists are telling us that we are confined to the 5% of the material world. We look at our world like the cave people looked at their wall. It is our limited reality. After 23 centuries the allegory of the cave still applies to human beings. We must get up and walk out of our cave. That will not be easy. The cave people did not accept the idea of a new reality. They resisted change and so do we. Our newspapers did not come out with big titles like “Let’s break our chains” or “Give me my 95% or give me death”. It will take some time before we can digest the idea a door has opened to a new freedom.
An experiment was made when they transferred the monkeys from the zoo downtown and turned them lose in a park. Those animals had been living in a cage all their life. It was decided to make the transition to a free park as smooth as possible. The monkeys were kept in their familiar cage and they moved the cages in the park. They gave them time to look at their new environment before opening the doors of the cages. The young monkeys were the first to venture outside and explore the park. The old ones went to the door and looked outside but never left their cage.
Our limits can give us a feeling of security. They prevent us from enjoying the freedom of the vast world and they also prevent the vast world from hurting us. We can share with the monkeys a need for security.
Let’s get out of our 5%.
Plato would approve! That could even be the main purpose of our lives. During the day, we live in the material world. Our sense organs keep us prisoners of what we can see, hear and touch. We must regain our freedom. We must escape from our jail. After our death, our bodies get recycled. What is left is the changes in our soul. Our main concern should be the effect that our life has on our soul. We don’t want to discover, after our death, that we wasted most of our time on Earth.
Our main concern should be
the effect that our life has on our soul.
Let us add another chapter to Plato’s allegory:
Plato makes his explorer go back to his cave to help his fellow men. That is very commendable, but let’s try another ending. Let’s assume that our explorer decides to stay outside the cave. You can guess what happens. He meets a woman and falls in love. He becomes conscious of new feelings and a new reality. One day, the woman asks him: “Are you conscious of love or is it love that makes you conscious?” This is not an easy question. It seems to him that consciousness and love come together. It is by experiencing love that we become conscious of it. As long as you have not experienced love you stay in your cave.
The woman made him conscious of feeling he could not have imagined. He is discovering that his first cave was inside a bigger cave, itself inside another bigger cave. We could say that he was climbing a staircase and every step up was widening his horizon.
Let us water the little seeds:
Freedom, consciousness, and love were already buried in our explorer, like seeds waiting to be watered. What happened inside him was like what happened in the nature around him. Seeds are buried in the ground like he was buried in his cave. If you don’t water the seeds, nothing comes out. Fortunately, seeds discover the sunlight and grow in a different world. It is their new reality. Consciously or not, we keep watering little seeds buried deep inside us. Pushing the envelope of our consciousness is a powerful motivation. Every stress in our life is an opportunity to bring something to the surface that will help us overcome future problems. This is how we water our little seeds and push the envelope of our freedom. The criterion of success is a feeling of purpose and happiness.
Let’s add a second chapter
The next step is the ‘platonic’ love. That means a feeling of love that does not need help from another human being. It is detached from the material world. It is the love of the whole universe! This love penetrates the world like the wind goes through a tree - without getting attached to it.
To live a human life is to water some seeds that already exist deep in our soul, such as freedom, consciousness, love. It is by developing them that we become conscious of a new reality. His allegory of the cave could itself be a seed for us to water.
What Plato did not tell us is that we have a problem. We water everything: Not only the seeds but also the weeds. Everything grows in our garden - the good and the bad.
