Plato’s Cave – Part One
In the Biblical gospel of St. John, the disciple describes how a band of priests and Pharisees brought Jesus before Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem, accusing him of claiming to be a king. When Pilate asked him if this was true, Jesus replied:
“To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice”. (John 18: 37)
It was at this point that Pilate uttered the immortal lines: “What is truth? “ Pilate’s question went to the heart of a conundrum that has plagued humanity ever since, especially since Jesus himself added to this mystery when he told his disciples:
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. (John 8: 32)
Of all the words in the English language, the word “truth” has so many different connotations that it has almost ceased to have any definitive meaning. What, after all, does truth really mean? And what sort of truth was Jesus talking about when he said that it had the power to “make you free“?
The obvious inference to be drawn from the above statement by Jesus is that mankind is living in a state of captivity, and that the “truth” that he came to bear witness to was able to liberate all those who embraced it. If so, then what sort of captivity could Jesus have been referring to?
Most commentators of the Bible have concluded that Jesus was referring to the fact that we are all sinners, and that he was the only one who had the power to liberate us from sin. And because he himself was able to defeat death, he was the only one who could guarantee eternal life.
But while this might seem on the surface to be a plausible interpretation, it still does not explain the underlying premise that Jesus was talking about, which was that there existed some form of “truth” that could save us from our sins, if only we could learn how to “know” or understand it.
Plato’s cave
But there was another man in history who claimed to know exactly what Jesus was talking about, even though he lived some four hundred years before the Christian era. This was the classical Greek philosopher whom we have come to know as Plato.
Plato was the founder of the Academy of Athens, which was the first institute of higher learning in the Western world. But what most modern scholars do not realise is that he was also an initiate of the Greek Mystery School, which drew on the wisdom of ancient Egypt, and of Atlantis before that.
In Book VII of his literary masterpiece entitled The Republic, Plato used an allegory to describe the human condition. It was an allegory that has come to be known as Plato’s Cave. Plato proposed a situation in which people had been imprisoned since early childhood inside a cave.
These people were chained together in such a way as to prevent them from looking around the cave, and to force them to look directly at a wall that was placed in front of them. So if there were any other people inside the cave, these chained prisoners would be unable to see them.
Plato then proposed that a large fire was burning behind these prisoners. The effect of this fire within the cave was to reflect the movements of other people inside the cave as shadows on the wall in front of them. And these shadows would then be the only things that the captives could see.
While the scenario posed by Plato may seem hopelessly contrived by modern standards, it served to illustrate his purpose. The key point that he wanted to make was that to the captive audience inside the cave, these shadows on the wall would in time come to be accepted as reality.
Plato then went on to suggest that if by some quirk of fate, one of the chained people was able to escape from the cave and emerge into the world outside, he would realise that what he had previously taken to be real would in fact be an illusion. It would not be the truth.
And if that person then returned to the cave and tried to explain to the remaining prisoners inside that the shadows on the wall that they had all previously agreed upon were real, were actually an illusion, that person would inevitably be rejected and most likely be laughed to scorn.
Of course, if Plato were alive today, he would be able to draw on a far better analogy. Suppose that, instead of a cave, a group of people were chained to their seats inside a modern movie theatre in such a way that they could see nothing else but the screen in front of them.
Then over time, these people would inevitably come to believe that the characters in the movies they were looking at were real, simply because the images they saw on the screen would be all that they would know, and they would have nothing else to compare them with.
And unless they somehow managed to find a way out of the movie theatre and gain access to the outside world, they would never realise that what they had previously believed to be reality was in fact nothing more than a series of flickering images upon a screen.
So the meaning of the allegory of Plato’s Cave is this. The world in which we live and move and have our being is not real. It is actually an illusion. It only appears to be real because we have convinced ourselves that the images reflected upon our screen of consciousness are real.
But we are not condemned to spend our lives imprisoned within the confines of this illusory world of shape and form. Not only are we free to escape from the cave at any time into the wider world of reality beyond, but it was the purpose of the Greek Mystery Schools to show how this could be done.
The highest good
This ultimate goal of all human life was described by Aristotle, who was Plato’s most famous pupil, as “the highest good”. This was in turn referred to by the Romans as the Summum Bonum of life, or highest truth to which any human being could aspire.
And this is where the words of Plato and those of Jesus begin to coalesce into a common theme. For if the world in which we live is not real but is actually an illusion, then how would we know? Only by escaping from this illusory world and discovering a new world of Reality (Truth) beyond.
And if we were able to discover this world of Reality for ourselves, we would then know that what we used to think of as the real world was not real at all. In other words, we would then wake up and know the “Truth”, and this “Truth” would set us free from the limitations of our old dream world.
And this, in a nutshell, was the same message that was delivered by Jesus, and was the reason why he came into the world. He came to bear witness to the living “Truth” that existed within himself, and to point out that this same “Truth” also existed inside each one of us.
Modern Christian preachers would have us believe that we are all sinners, and that Jesus died upon the cross to save us from our sins. Sadly, they have allowed their own ignorance to blind themselves from the Truth. Jesus did not come to the earth to die. He came to teach us how to live.
“I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”. (John 10: 10)
The idea that there exists another level of Reality that is our true self was not confined to Plato or to Jesus. It has in fact been the fundamental truth attested to by the founders of every major religion in the history of the earth. And every religion has a special name for this underlying Reality.
In the fifth century B.C., the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu founded the philosophy of Taoism. It was centred on the principle of Tao. Tao was the foundation of all creation. Heaven and earth were its garments, yet it remained immutable amid all the changing fortunes of life.
No words could describe its real nature, for it was beyond the capacity of the human mind to express. Referring to this Tao Lao Tsu confessed: “The Tao which can be expressed in words is not the eternal Tao; the name which can be uttered is not its eternal name”. (Tao Te Ching)
According to wisdom of the Vedas, which became the foundation of Hinduism, there existed one single, eternal, immanent Reality which was called Brahman. This unchanging Reality was the source of the manifested world, but was unaffected by the ebb and flow of creation.
In Zen Buddhism, this underlying Reality was simply referred to as Sunyata (the void or emptiness) or Tathata (suchness), because it was beyond description. No thought, word or quality could serve to clothe its mysterious being.
For the Sufi masters who practised the mystical teachings of Islam, this goal of perfection was called Ihsan, or union with Allah, and their ascetic practices were devoted towards the purification of the outer self in order to achieve unison with this ultimate Reality within.
Union with the Divine
All of the world religions have been driven by this common theme that a true world of Reality exists, and that it exists within the heart of every man and woman. And because it exists inside of ourselves, every one of us can escape from this illusory world of tears and achieve union with the Divine.
The Buddha called this union with the Divine Nirvana, which literally means “blown out”, like a candle in the wind. It is the extinguishing of the individual personality and the awakening of the universal spirit within. In the words of the Buddha: “The dewdrop slips into the shining sea”.
The Hindus referred to it by the Sanskrit term Mukti or Moksha, meaning liberation or enlightenment. This was not something new to be gained, but merely an awakening to our real nature. We simply become freed from the mistaken idea that we are bound by our limited personality.
Jesus called this inner state of supreme Reality the “Kingdom of God”. It is important to note here that the “Kingdom of God” should not be confused with the “Kingdom of Heaven”, as so many Biblical scholars tend to do today. They are two completely different things.
When Jesus talked about the “Kingdom of Heaven”, he was talking about a heavenly realm beyond this world that was populated by angels and archangels who acted as his servants and guardians. For as he explained to Pontius Pilate at the time of his trial:
“My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews”. (John 18: 36)
Instead, when he spoke about this “Kingdom of God”, he explained that it was a state of being that existed inside the heart of every man and woman, rather than a heavenly world that was inhabited by other angelic beings. For, as he explained to his disciples:
“The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or lo there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you”. (Luke 17: 20-21)
This “Kingdom of God” described by Jesus is not remote from us. It is in fact the life force that animates our sense of identity. And although we may think that it is part of our limited physical body, this state of immortality actually exists beyond the boundaries of space as well as of time itself.
The great I AM
According to St. John, when Jesus was preaching to the Jews in the temple at Jerusalem, he told them that Abraham himself, the founding patriarch of Judaism, “rejoiced to see his day”. And when the Jews asked him how this was possible since he was “not yet fifty years old”, Jesus replied:
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am”. (John 8: 58)
In fact he went further, by announcing that “I and my Father are one”. (John 10: 30) The Jews were so enraged that “they took up stones to cast at him”, because he not only claimed to be the son of God, but because he also used the same words that God did when speaking to Moses:
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you”. (Exodus 3: 14)
But when the crowd picked up stones to kill him for blasphemy, and for daring to equate himself with God, Jesus responded: “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods”. (John 10: 34) In other words, Jesus was not only saying that he was divine, but that all of us are as well.
Sadly, this message of mankind’s fundamental divinity was rejected by the Jewish leaders of that time, just as it is rejected today by those lieutenants of the Church who pontificate on matters of Church doctrine. They obviously prefer that we remain chained within Plato’s Cave.
And we in turn have simply allowed ourselves to be fooled into believing that we are imprisoned within our limited bodies, and are doomed to end our lives in suffering and in death. But this is not the truth. Our fears are nothing more that the phantasms of misguided minds.
The Truth within
So what exactly is this I AM that Jesus was referring to? And the answer could not be more simple. The I AM is a state of being. It is that sense of identity that resides inside each one of us, and is the foundation of our very personalities. It is the inner feeling that we exist as individual beings.
The I AM that Jesus identified with is the same I AM that each one of us experiences at every moment of our lives. We think that this I AM feeling is somehow produced inside of us, and is dependent on the health of our physical bodies. We also think that it dies when the body dies.
But this I AM is ageless. It never grows old. It is the same now as it was when we were born. It is the same now as it will be when we are old. This sense of I AM does not fade when we get sick, or get diminished if we should happen to lose an arm or a leg. Our sense of being is unchanged.
What Jesus came to teach us is that this I AM sensation is REAL. In fact it is the ONLY thing that is real. The riddle of life is that while the I AM somehow attaches itself to a whole range of different states of mind, only the I AM is real, and all these other states are unreal.
So when we dream at night, our sense of the I AM is real, but the dream is not. And if we should happen to be in a hallucinogenic state, the I AM is real but the drugged state isn’t. In the same way, visions are unreal, as are hypnotic states. And so is our waking world.
It is the experience of every person that our waking world mysteriously appears when we wake up in the morning, and then disappears every night when we fall asleep. This alone should be enough to convince us that our waking world is evanescent, and is little more than a series of fleeting images upon the screen of consciousness.
So to carry this analogy further, every person who is alive today lives in a dream world that is inhabited by other dream beings. Even our personalities are unreal. They are merely the clothes that we have chosen to wear to cover up the I AM sensation inside of ourselves.
So if I say that I AM happy or sad, it is the I AM that is real, while the idea that I am happy or sad is not. And so it is for every other idea that we might have as an individual. And what binds us to this world of illusion are our thoughts and our desires, and the actions of the mind.
The I AM may be likened to the Sun. In fact in some Mystery Schools it is portrayed as an Inner Sun. And the actions of the mind can be likened to the ripples on the water of a lake, or the clouds that blot the appearance of the Sun in the sky.
When the surface of a lake is completely calm, it reflects the perfect image of the Sun. But when the surface is disturbed, say by the actions of the wind, then ripples occur which spread across the lake. The single image of the Sun now disappears, and is replaced by thousands of tiny suns reflected upon the waves.
Or suppose that there is a perfectly clear sky in which there is nothing to obscure the image of the Sun. But if the sky should become filled with dark clouds, then the image of the Sun disappears, even though it has not changed and continues to shine as brightly as before.
Thoughts and desires represent the ripples on the water or the clouds in the sky. And all that is needed to restore the image of the Sun in all its glory, is to get rid of the clouds that have gathered in the sky, or calm the waters of the lake. You don’t need to do anything to the Sun.
So in order to escape from the illusory world in which we have become imprisoned, we simply have to hold on to the feeling of I AM above all else, and then disregard all those other thoughts and desires that occupy our minds. This is all we have to do to become united with the eternal I AM.
By simply focusing our minds upon the sense of I AM as we go about our daily business, it will draw us in. This inner I AM will then steadily expand within us until we become one with the entire universe, and we reach that moment of recognition when we realise that the I AM inside of us IS GOD.
There is nothing new to be attained. No higher state of consciousness needs to be acquired. There is no intervention by a higher power, nor is any remission of sin required to achieve this union with the Divine. The sense of the I AM that you feel at this very moment is THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
THIS is the Truth that makes us free.
To be concluded in Part Two.
