Plato's Cave Allegory

Here is a comment on someone's blog which I think some people might find interesting. The comment was posted on "Trey's" blog. Trey is the lead guitarist for my favorite band, Morbid Angel. The references below refer to lyrics of their songs.

When Steve sung about "chains" in Chambers of Dis, I, God of Our Own Divinity, I initially interpreted "chains" as meaning what Plato did in his cave allegory. Chains that bind / blind one from knowing / seeing truth.

A quote I read somewhere:
"None are more hopelessley enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."

This quote inspired me to write here about the possibility that the first free individual who broke the rusty chains in the depths of The Cave actually is still seeing shadows. What if everyone bound to that rock is actually wearing a VR helmet and body suit and has been for their whole existence? The chains really didn't break and the first free person was duped into thinking they were free in order to satisfy his insatiable curiosity to explore the true nature of reality; this was done so that the chains would never break as one who thinks they are free stops pulling against the chains.

It's what I thought was going to happen in The Matrix: Reloaded to explain why Neo could have control over the Sentinels: they were all still in The Matrix! Alas, Neo was granted magical powers instead rather than reveal what I believe to be true:
There is an infinite nest of Matricies / Caves all embedded within one another; escape from The Cave and you're still stuck on planet Earth would be the allegorical way to state that. Leave planet Earth and you're still stuck in our universe. Enter hyperspace but you're still stuck in dimension 5. Free of dimension 5, you're still stuck in dimension 6. And so on... One can be awakened but still stuck on day one of their Awakening. Call it what you will but there seems to be a force that keeps binding one to this contrived reality, "trapped in others' spells," as it says in Chambers of Dis.

Then again, "freedom and prisons are in the mind," and there is no limit to how far the mind can expand or contract. No limit to how free or how imprisoned. As Einstein said once, "imagination is more important than knowledge."

Question: am I half awake or am I half asleep? lol

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peace for all
love for all
bliss for all

...may your journey be graceful...

If anything is possible, then the statement, "anything is possible," is possibly false.

Very interesting post. Thank you for posting it.

I have always thought of the cave as the unconscious or subconscious mind. We can get stuck in unresolved issues and things we don't recognize in ourselves. To me the journey of the hero is the inner journey. We are as free as we allow ourselves to know and accept who we are. When we can have a healthy balance between the conscious and unconscious mind we have some freedom.

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Interesting... There indeed many things chained up in our unconscious minds. All that emotion we stuff, pain and suffering, and dreams and aspirations. Perhaps the true self is also chained up somewhere in the unconscious mind, waiting to be unleashed.

__________________
peace for all
love for all
bliss for all

...may your journey be graceful...

If anything is possible, then the statement, "anything is possible," is possibly false.

I like this. There is enough wisdom in what the cave represents, allegorically, that curiosity and wonder seem to hold sway in bringing to light what is knowable. I like that allegory itself has so much metaphysical weight as to bear on reflective thinking; to have been successful in paralleling knowledge like that which is religious, metaphysical, and metaphorical. Perhaps all that is left wanting is a scientific perspective on light and darkness that is common.

Our interpretation of the allegory is usefull, there is no doubt about that. What really helped me understand its practical significance was the parallels with buddhist 'doctrine'. I use scare quotes because doctrine, myth, allegory, and especially interpretation, share an important relationship with knowing. Imagine for a moment, being "enlightened" to ultimate/absolute truth. The Buddhist parallel is that a sattvic person, more likely a boddhisattva, would after being enlightened, re-enter the world of common everyday folks to help them toward what is light - sort of plunging back into the cave for compassionate, selfless reasons. This has been observably difficult too, historically, because the chains that bind, so to speak, do so in the cave moreso than beyond. For that reason, i suppose, i like as well the "zen" sensibility in the saying that: "before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

Oh lamentable poetry, how do you free us all from darkness!

Hi Prapanther

I find direct parallels between Plato's Cave analogy and the Buddhist parable of the "Burning House"

http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~p...ts/lotus1.html

IMO Simone Weil had a very profound accurate understanding of the cave analogy. I found a brief summary on this site.

http://www.rivertext.com/weil4.html

She also knew that science had the capacity to some day as you suggest, represent that which was its source when she wrote: