Unraveling the Riddle of Plato's Cave

2005 UPDATE: CONDENSING A NEW PARADIGM

I am increasingly visualizing these days a concrete model for unraveling Plato's ancient riddles about physical (and moral) reality. He literally described a (usually) invisible, surrounding source of "form" for things and relations appearing to us humans. Reality does obviously extend beyond these appearances.

The extension seemingly encompasses a transcendent "shaman's realm" hypothesized by various scholars. It evidently features higher dimensions--interpenetrating our own--as imagined throughout the ensuing website. These thus may be constituted right before our unseeing eyes--behind a veil of familiar appearances.

Accordingly the rudiments of a two-step phenomenon are hypothesized hereafter: human perceptions and (imaginative) conceptions are processed from transcendent form; and projected--through our minds--onto an ethereal medium (electromagnetic "canvas") which becomes our "material" enclave. Its "holographic" contents are thus filled-out, and solidified, by our own mental and sensory facullties. (A beautiful conception from Cheyenne shamans becomes relevant: the Cosmos is a mirror. Maybe levels of appearance are reflected --and shadowed-- into one another. We usually see only immediate surfaces of the total phenomenon.)

My working hypothesis is that humans can visualize reality far deeper--beyond the veil--at least with the "mind's eye;" if not with ordinary sensory extensions. This would deploy our higher mental faculties (introduced at the close of Book 6 in Plato's REPUBLIC). These uncannily resemble our (largely unused) capacities--beyond the verbal "left-hemisphere" now dominating human consciousness--described by "brain" scientists in recent decades.

Maybe now it all boils down to a simple matter of putting two and two together. Conceivably . . .

Totems

Next Page
Back