One of
Plato’s most famous allegories is known as ‘The allegory of the cave’. Plato
has Socrates describe a gathering of people who have lived imprisoned in a cave
all of their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on
the wall by things passing in front of a fire behind them, and begin to
designate names to these shadows. According to Plato's Socrates, the shadows
are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then explains how the
philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to
understand that the shadows on the wall do not make up reality at all, as he
can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen by the
prisoners.
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| Riverine environment at my mother's house |
This
allegory is a part of Plato’s ‘Theory of Forms’ that propounds the idea that
what we perceive dimly is just the shadow of
‘real things’. Reality exists in an ideal realm beyond our senses, and this
archetypal realm is the home of the true forms such as Truth, Beauty and
Reason.
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| Water surfaces |
I want
to describe how this idea, which is extremely pervasive in modern society, drove my life in very unsatisfactory directions, until I was finally able to
free myself of its grasp.
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| Paperbark parasite
I
wanted to be like Plato’s philosopher who could perceive the truth behind
reality. I began in religious and spiritual domains. Maybe the esoteric
teachings of religions could reveal what was truly real and really true. I
joined monasteries, meditated and explored religious practices.
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| Concrete and sea surfaces |
Dissatisfied
with those pursuits, I dove into the more occult realms for real meaning. I studied the Kabbalah, astrology and yoga,
masonry; seeking this elusive reality. Eastern metaphysics and its trivialized
reincarnation in ‘new age’ beliefs sidelined me for many years. I lived in an
ashram in India and worked with a revered saint of Kashmir Shaivism, Muktananda.
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| Light post nail |
The
more intensely and devoutly I studied these approaches, the more disenchanted I
became. So I thought, perhaps I could use the intellect to approach pure
reason. I went back to university and pursued learning in psychology, computer
science, acupuncture, education and mathematics. I acquired seven degrees,
enough to convince me that while knowledge is indeed a beautiful and powerful
thing, it did not contain a path to the inner wisdom that Plato’s philosopher
must have possessed.
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| Megan, blocks and sea |
Along
my academic journey, I encountered post-modernism and its ideas of
deconstructing the cultural and social biases behind ‘perceived truths’. Its
elimination of any kind of absolutism demonstrated to me that meaning is
constructed. Cracks were appearing in the true and the beautiful. If all
thought is a construction, how can there be any ‘higher reality’. I realized that
each and every human being is a ‘meaning-making machine’. There was no absolute
truth out there; we each constructed our own reality. The corollary is that we
are all free to construct whatever reality we so desire.
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| Ballina bar river entrance |
So if
meaning is so subjective and transient, what of the search for verities on
which to base one’s life? I began to ruthlessly cull myself of beliefs. Any
kind of spiritual remnants were the first to go. I cultivated a relentless
evidence-based empiricism while acknowledging the constructed nature of
science. My faith in psychology faded, my interests were drawn to the more
rational and empirical science like mathematics and physics.
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| Navigation mark |
I
began using Buddhist ideas of mindfulness in my approaches to personal change
and education. Mindfulness encourages a simple observation of what is, without
interpretation. I rethought the approaches of the phenomenologists that studied
raw sensory experience. There was a glimmer of salvation here that would
re-emerge later.
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| Hard and soft surfaces |
Concurrent
with all this thought, I was ageing. Particularly after retirement, I had more
opportunity to observe the meaning-making activities of people. I’ve written
previously about the mindlessness of status-seeking consumerism and how Megan
and I now called ourselves ‘post consumers’. The activities of old no longer
held much interest. Sports, shopping, fine dining, cars, houses, possessions:
all seemed to be just ‘stuff’, encumbrances to life.
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| Random texture |
The
value propositions that I’d been sold no longer held warmth and attraction. I
seemed to be heading for an existential void, a kind of nihilistic despair. I
think Megan was wondering whether medication might be appropriate.
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| Close encounters with surface |
However,
this simple little blog intervened with an answer. I had been taking photo’s to
illustrate the blog, and we’d bought an SLR camera before we left. As I started
to explore learning to take better photographs, I started observing the
‘surface of the world’ more closely. This may have been visual to begin, but
I’m really referring to the entire perceptible sensorium, including sound and
touch.
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| Modern day flight |
This
skin-of-the-world, on reflection, seemed to contain so much more than the dim
flickers on the wall of the cave that Plato referred to. This skin is directly
given; it isn’t constructed by meaning making. In the jargon of cognitive
psychology, perception is the ‘front-end’ of cognition. Certainly, there are
fine-grained constructions that create our percepts; there has to be to
perceive order from Berkley’s ‘buzzing booming confusion’. But this skin seems
to be as close as you can get to the mystical ‘it’; it is the fabric that
stands between subject and object.
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| A unique view of the world |
Strangely,
this gives me solace. I can sit in the skin-of-the-world and just bask in it
for what it is. There is no meaning other than this. This is the one finger of
Buddha pointing at the moon. Metaphorically, I can ‘undig’ myself from whatever
cognitive tangle or quest for meaning that embroils me, and just lie back on
the surface. I feel supported by it, its silky embrace promises to me in quiet
whispers that this might just be enough.
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| A satisfied surface aviator |
