The surface of the world

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

A satisfied surface aviator