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Plato's Cave - JimMcCord.com

Diagram of Plato's Scenario

I recall an intriguing dictum somewhere among earlier books of Plato's REPUBLIC. It hypothesized indeed a big school—conceivably the earth itself—replete with "gods" who seem to be "schoolmasters." All their activities are to be "censored," leaving the students (ourselves?) with rumors about what is going on; which sound a lot like our mythology and penchant for hearsay. Anyway an education is implied with riddles and trickery. Maybe this is how we are being prepared for life (dimensionally) beyond the earthly enclave. Maybe.

Shadows On Walls

In any event the prospect seems more promising than continued confinement in Plato's Cave: chained by suggestible preoccupation with verbally labeling "shadows" deceptively appearing on surrounding "walls" (seemingly stiffened "themselves" by sensory mirroring sealed with the selfsame suggestibility of words). Besides, we now evidently live a life of lies, in effect; always on one paradoxical side (or t'other) of a Cosmic Mirror which is deeply implicated.

For the shadowy words that preoccupy our attention apparently cannot approximate structurally more than half-truths, one at a time—as demonstrated throughout this website—which ends up tricking us into a bassackward view of the full truth unfolding all around. (What we think is true—and the reverse too.) Consider for reflection an oriental ecstasy.

Supremely Spiritual Wholeness

Northrop described Nirvana as an highly transcendental state of mind: wherein the still-differentiated Aesthetic Continuum dissolves—along with familiar intervals of space/ time—into an undifferentiated continuum. My own practice at emptying the mind—de-verbalization—occasionally generates glimmers of potential in that dreamy direction to lend some credence.

Western philosophers have posed (characteristically) an either/or choice between subjective solipsism (as signified by the oriental ecstasy) or the existence of objective reality. Why cannot both formulations impart a fuller view of reality when combined (triangulated as in advanced Hegelian logic)?

Obviously the especially western habituation to elementary logic (of "either/or") has led us into fragmented polarizations of reality as described verbally (and categorically). My experience has suggested though that we were born with the previously postulated animal savvy which can still facilitate beholding reality in whole chunks; albeit as differentiated in ordinary consciousness.

The human mind is evidently capable in addition of reaching undifferentiated Nirvana—an extreme pinnacle of spiritual wholeness—within the contextual ambit of obviously objective reality surrounding us.

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Recalling a suggestion from Spinoza: what we temporally call "falsehood" and "evil" comprise incomplete truth about natural reality engaged in the eternal process of becoming whole . . .