For a significant part of my life, I’ve always had this looming feeling that something
is just not right.
Something feels a bit out of place.
It’s just a slight discomfort, but a consistent one.
Even when everything is seemingly fine, and life is just unfolding without any major twist
or turns, I still feel that sense of unease.
There are moments where I am completely distracted, when I am swimming on a sunny day, or watching
a great film, or dealing with survival problems.
But those distractions are few and far between.
I cannot pin point this feeling, for it is abstract in nature.
But I think I remember when it began.
This was many years ago.
I was a little kid holding an adult’s hand; I don’t remember who it was.
I was walking in the midst of a barren field in the middle of the night.
The silhouette of a distant forest surrounded the field.
I looked up to see the clear sky, so full of stars.
That’s what I remember the most about that night.
The moon was white and perfectly round, seemed like it was just hanging without any support.
That was the moment!
I thought that whole scenery could not be real.
The silhouettes, the moon in suspension, the moonlit field, everything felt unreal.
To this day, I cannot shake that feeling, the abstract, surreal feeling of something
being out of place.
As I grew up and carefully observed my reality, not just the natural phenomenon, but also
the world at large with its various cultures, wars, conditionings and recurring archetypes,
the feeling of discomfort only grew deeper.
No matter where I went, I couldn’t find my home.
There were times where I felt like there was an invisible boot on my neck, preventing me
from getting up or even moving my head, but asking me to appreciate my place in my reality.
The more I tried to be free, the tighter the boot’s grip on my neck became.
But I was reluctant in letting people know about my inner most feelings, especially about
the boot’s grip, as I thought it would definitely be mistaken as depression.
But my reluctance went out of the window, once I came across Plato’s Allegory of the Cave
The Allegory of the Cave was presented by the Greek philosopher Plato in his work Republic.
It is written as a dialogue between Plato’s brother Glaucon and his mentor Socrates.
Socrates asks Glaucon to imagine a cave.
In a dark corner of the cave, there is a group of prisoners, their heads and necks chained,
forcing them to look only at a wall in front of them.
They’ve been in that state since their birth.
Their only source of light is a fire, flickering and burning behind them.
Occasionally people passed by the fire carrying various objects and pets.
Their footsteps, voices and sounds echoed throughout the cave, and their shadows cast
on the wall that the prisoners were forced to look at.
The prisoners only ever knew the shadows and the wall for they can’t even turn their heads
With time the prisoners named and classified the shadows, calling a dog’s shadow, a dog
and a book’s shadow, a book, believing they actually perceived the real objects.
They sometimes held competitions among themselves and awarded honour and respect to whoever
predicts the next shadow.
One day, a prisoner is freed from the group.
He is dragged out of the cave and towards the sunlight.
He is brought out for the very first time.
He experiences an immeasurable pain as he encounters the sun and brightness for the
very first time.
Gradually his eyes adjust.
At first he begins to see the shadows of things and then he begins to see the things themselves.
He is then told that the things were actually real and the shadows were just mere illusions.
He refuses to believe it, as the shadows appear much clearer to him.
Everything overwhelms him and he is now desperate to return to the cave as the cave was all
he ever knew.
But slowly he accepts his new reality.
He enjoys the green field and the colors of his world.
He looks up at the night sky and marvels at the stars and the moon and one day, he even
looks directly at the sun, the source of everything he has seen.
The sun also reminds him of his days in the dark cave and his fellow prisoners.
He thinks of their competitions and their rituals of honour and how he no longer feels
connected to their world.
He feels sorry for them and so he returns to the cave to share information about his
new world.
As he is no longer used to the darkness of the cave, he has a hard time navigating and
seeing the shadows on the wall.
The other prisoners think that his journey outside has made him weak and blind.
As he tries to free them, they violently resist, even going as far as killing the person trying
to free them.
This allegory can be interpreted in many ways and over the years, it has been.
It has epistemological, political and metaphysical connotations to it.
When you examine it closely, you realize that it is incredibly structured and layered.
The cave represents our everyday reality.
Our whole life, we consider what’s being projected in front of us as the absolute truth.
We constantly and mindlessly conform to what society dictates, never stopping to examine
the reasons behind the events, and just believing that the shadows are real.
We never stop to consider the fact that the shadows can be manipulated, altered and presented.
We don’t realize we are imprisoned either, as we are born into this bondage.
The chains that hold us are comfortable, as that’s all we know.
We simply forget to examine our state, as we are mesmerized by the shadows and we are
lost in them.
But we are capable of seeking and seeing the truth, no matter how difficult that task is.
By the very nature of our mind, we possess the ability to transcend.
We possess the ability to be aware of our self, our journey and to comprehend the illusions
around us.
The journey beyond our comfortable everyday existence can be daunting and scary.
When one comes face to face with the reality for what it is, an illusion, it can be extraordinarily
painful, like the prisoner’s first time encounter with the light.
Truth always hurts.
But what does seeing the truth actually mean?
We live in a material world of constant change and impermanence.
In our reality, it is almost impossible to find true, eternal and absolute knowledge.
Seasons change, mighty buildings crumble, great civilizations come to an end, people
and all living things die.
Even our present constantly deceives us.
Our sensory perceptions also let us down form time to time.
What looks to be an oasis in the desert, would turn out to be a mirage.
The sweet taste would gradually turn into sourness.
It seems that nothing is absolute in our reality.
But Plato claims that behind this world of unreliable, deceiving appearances lies a world
that’s permanent, absolute and reliable.
He calls it, The World of Forms or Ideas.
He argues that Forms, even when they are non-physical, represent the most accurate reality.
He believed that “Forms” are the only object of study, which can provide true knowledge.
Now, imagine a triangle.
What you are imagining is the ‘Form’ or the ‘Idea’ that Plato describes, the perfect
version of a triangle.
Now when you draw it with a pencil, it wouldn’t be the perfect triangle, because it is just
an imitation of the form that was in your mind.
The perfect, and the unchanging state of the triangle is its Form, and the imperfect representation
is what you draw.
How good your drawing will be, depends on your ability to recognize the form.
Plato says that the Forms exist in an abstract state in their own realm, independent of the
minds that conceive it, in a spiritual reality, if you will.
No one has ever seen a perfect triangle, but the very fact that we can conceive the perfect
Idea or Form of a triangle, means that the Idea of Triangle must exist.
Forms are not just limited to geometry.
According to Plato, for every single thing that you are witnessing in your reality, for
every conceivable thing, there lies a corresponding, perfect example of that Form.
Woman, Man, Tree, Cloud, Computer, Ship, Dog, Basket, Door, House … it can be anything
in your reality.
All of these are examples of independently existing, abstract and perfect Ideas.
So whatever we see in our everyday reality is equivalent of the shadows that the prisoners
see in the cave.
Mere illusions!
Plato puts the Forms in the highest level of our reality.
He splits our reality into two categories, The Visible World and The Intelligible World.
The Visible World is the world that is seen, but cannot be thought.
It is our everyday existence.
The one we unquestioningly consume.
He describes this in his Analogy of the Divided Line.
Imagine a straight line.
The line is divided into four parts.
A to B, B to C, C to D and D to E. Here, the first two parts, the AB and BC is assigned
to the visible world.
AB is where the shadows and the reflections of our physical bodies sit.
BC is where the actual physical things themselves sit in this category.
So, the first half of this line is devoted to our visible world, what we experience every
single day.
But Plato says that there is a world beyond what we experience everyday, which is represented
by the next half.
The part CD, is the lowest of the intelligible world, where the mathematical reasoning lie.
This is the part where the abstract mathematical objects such as geometric lines and numbers
are discussed, where we assume hypothesis and move towards a final conclusion.
These objects lie outside of the physical world.
Even the abstract mathematical reasoning of the intelligible world is less important to Plato
So his highest place in the reality, the part DE, even transcends the reasoning and soar
higher than all the hypotheses.
Plato calls this stage the Form of the Good.
It is the ultimate object of knowledge.
It is not only important for a philosopher to understand these Ideas or Forms, but also
recognize the relation between all the four levels.
Similar to the Sun in our visible reality, which is what allows us to see everything,
the Form of the Good in the intelligible world forms the basis of understanding all other forms
“It is what gives truth to the things known and the power to know to the knower.
It is not only the cause of knowledge and truth, it also the object of knowledge.”
But once a philosopher witnesses the true reality and its unchanging absolute nature,
it is also his duty to return to the Cave, the reality of illusions, to educate his
fellow prisoners and try to set them free, no matter how much they violently resist.
It is very important to note here, that Socrates was sentenced to death, because of the threat
he imposed on Athenian democracy.
He taught youngsters of Athens, the methods of intellectual inquiry.
In other words his death was a result of his attempts to lead people out of the cave.
Plato also takes the opportunity to use the allegory of the cave to make a political statement.
He says, the people who have the ability to step out of the cave, no matter how painful
the journey is, and look directly at the sun, the true reality, are the only ones that should
be able to rule.
Plato explains that only philosophers have the ability to conceive and understand the
Forms, so the ideal ruler of people should be Philosopher Kings.
Only when such a person comes to power, the citizens of the state would have the opportunity
to step out of the cave and see the light.
When I first heard about the Allegory of the Cave and the theory of Forms, I almost cried.
I so clearly identified with the prisoners as the boot on my neck and the chains on the
prisoners’ neck felt eerily similar.
My experience with this world has always been consistently surreal, and as a result I’ve
never felt at home, anywhere.
The strange part is, I realize this imprisonment.
I identify myself as the prisoner.
But sometimes, I also feel as if the chains that once held me captive are no longer there.
I am free to leave the cave any time I want, but I am choosing to stay in the prison and
continuing to look at the shadows.
Probably because, no matter how dysfunctional the shadows are, they are also familiar.
I feel like I am not exiting the cave because I am scared, even to slightly turn my head
and look behind.