Shadows and Sunlight - Embracing Reality in Plato's Cave

Plato’s Cave allegory is a timeless metaphor for contemplating matters of consciousness. Through his parable, Plato invites us to challenge our beliefs about the nature of reality and sparks a deeper quest for meaning. Written in Book VII of The Republic, which is one of Plato’s most influential works, the cave analogy has been interpreted and reinterpreted throughout the ages and used as a resource for introspection among philosophers and seekers of truth.

The story goes something like this. There’s a cave. Inside of it are some prisoners who’ve never seen the light of day. They’re chained to a wall so that they can’t leave and they’ve been in this position since childhood. For them, their entire perspective is bound up within the cave.

To make matters worse, there are mischievous puppeteers lurking behind them. The puppeteers occasionally light fires and project shadows on the walls in front of the prisoners. At first glance, this may seem like a harmless trick. But given that the prisoners don’t know any better, they believe the shadows to be reality itself.

“Then in every way,” writes Plato, “such prisoners would deem reality to be nothing else than the shadows of artificial objects” (Plato, Rep. VII, 515c). Their knowledge of truth is shaped by the malicious actions of the puppeteers. We can anticipate that the prisoners, over time, will begin to develop their own narratives, stories, and mythologies as they try to make sense of the nature of the shadows. The prisoners will carry these as truths. Only the puppeteers know that it’s an illusion.

One day, one of the prisoner’s breaks free and escapes. He makes the trek to the cave’s entrance and, for the first time, steps outside and witnesses the magnificence of nature. To be sure, we can imagine that he’d be in a state of overwhelming awe at this realization. Plato leverages this moment to help us understand the difference between our relatively blind conceptions of an imperfect reality (e.g. ignorance in the cave) and the realization of a more comprehensive reality that lays beyond (e.g. stepping out of the cave).

For Plato, what we experience in the physical world is an imperfect copy of truth. Attaining perfect knowledge requires us to shed our biases and preconceptions of the world and seek out the “Forms” or “Ideas” that lay beyond. These forms, as Plato refers to them, are divine qualities that are in themselves perfect and immutable. So, in order to gain perfect knowledge and experience truth, we have to realize the form that lays behind it.

However, this is easier said than done. Plato suggests that life is a perpetual education which brings us closer and closer to truth. The nearer we are to this state of truth when we die, the more seamless will be our transition into death and the journey thereafter. This is why Plato believes that the true philosopher makes death their profession. By dying to the world, and by relinquishing prior beliefs that we hold dear, we can open ourselves up to assimilate a more comprehensive condition of truth (see “Training for Death: Socrates on Philosophical Purification”).

This is a continuous journey. There may always be higher truths to be discovered. Like many esotericists, Plato suggests that it might not be possible to experience absolute truth while in human form. However, we can come closer to it and we can know through the power of reason that such a thing exists. Dedicating one’s life to the pursuit of this truth and living out one’s life in alignment with the “good” is a responsibility of the philosopher, an outlook that mirrors esoteric traditions both East and West.

We can imagine that the prisoner’s first step out of the cave was an overwhelmingly powerful experience. This is something akin to the near-death experience, the psychedelic journey, or the peak state of mystical rapture. These are moments of gnosis, a form of ineffable, intuitive, and unmediated divine knowledge that involves a sudden appreciation and awareness of something greater that lays beyond ordinary consciousness.

Gnosis begins to dissolve the blockades that constrain the limits of knowledge. The force of the experience is often so great that it can feel like ultimate truth. However, we require time to process the experience and integrate it into our lives. The escaped prisoner, in the moment of realization, has yet to integrate the experience. Still, he feels compelled to share his experience with others.

The escaped prisoner, now free with newfound knowledge, decides to rush back into the cave and inform the other prisoners of his discovery. He naturally wants to release them. However, much to his surprise, when he tries to convey this knowledge to his peers, they suspect him of being mad and want to kill him!

How deeply resistant are we to change? How many times do we deem brilliant people insane, paradigm-breakers a problem? How uncomfortable are we when facing the possibility of deep change? And how comfortable are we in our own illusion? It’s one of the most important questions posed by The Matrix – red pill or blue pill? Do we prefer to stay blind and live in an illusion or do we place truth on a higher plane? And are we willing to bear the consequences of that truth if we’re willing to seek it?

There’s a price to pay for tearing the veil. A price to truth and consequences for knowledge. First, in that the realization of truth demands a re-calibration of the untruth or incomplete truth that lays behind. The experience may be overwhelmingly positive and may leave us in a state of awe-stricken wonder, perhaps with humble gratitude for the privilege of experiencing it. Yet the world we came from, the now incomplete truth, still exists and must be reconciled with the new.

The last time I died, my death was an exceptional experience – the most powerful event of my life – which I describe imperfectly as an experience of absolute reverence, awe, and love. The challenge wasn’t death itself but coming back to life and living once more in this world. If death was an experience of perfection, I was now able to see in clear contrast life’s imperfections. These became more apparent over time.

Much like Plato’s escapee, my death broke the chains of illusion and allowed me to escape from the cave. I stepped out into the light and experienced something so much greater than anything I’d known before. Yet when I came back to life and tried to tell people about it, they all but wanted to kill me.

It's ironic, don’t you think? That as my retelling of my experience of death became more granular and accurate over the years, many people became more resistant to it. It doesn’t seem to matter how wonderful the experience was, or how artistically I can convey its nature. They just seem to want to kill me and stay in their cave. But why? Because pursing the truth of death, in my view, is synonymous with pursuing the life of the yogi, the life of the philosopher, and the life of the esotericist. Perhaps for many it’s easier to stay in the chains and retain a position of comfort - to swallow the blue pill instead of the red, and to choose to forget.

So, the escapee in Plato’s Cave allegory faces at least two challenges. The first is in reconciling his newfound truth internally. The second is in communicating that truth to others externally. Plato suggests that both are challenges that must be overcome by the philosopher. It’s the philosopher’s duty to return to the cave and guide others towards enlightenment. It’s also the philosopher’s duty to pursue truth internally. The ladder is a perquisite for the former. Both go hand in hand.

As Plato writes, “It is the duty of us…to compel the best natures to attain the knowledge which we pronounced greatest, and to win the vision of the good, to scale the ascent, and when they have reached the heights and taken adequate view, we must not allow [them to] linger there” (Ibid., 519d).[i]

We can draw out a strong relationship here between the esoteric philosophies of the East and West. Both the bodhisattva of the East and Plato’s philosopher experience truth (e.g. enlightenment) and voluntarily return to the world to help others who are still suffering. The bodhisattva and the philosopher, having experienced and assimilated a higher truth, recognize that others live in strife because they’re still bound by an illusory and limited construct of the world.

They develop compassion for others and selflessly dedicate themselves to help those still constrained by the chains of ignorance. They prioritize the well-being of others above their own enlightenment. In other words, both the bodhisattva and the philosopher could in theory retreat from the world, abandon it, and hover in the bliss of enlightenment. Instead, they choose to go back to the world and involve themselves with it. They understand that no one is enlightened until everyone is enlightened. Like the soldier, they leave no one behind.

To do so would be to revel in our own bliss while ignoring the fractured and suffering world that exists beneath our feet. How could we legitimately experience perpetual bliss if we knew, at the same time, that others were suffering? I personally don’t feel that this is possible. And if it is, it’s an indication that those who live in perpetual bliss while ignoring the reality of the world are either blind to it themselves, which is an indication of ignorance, or choose to ignore it, which isn’t at all the mark of true enlightenment.

To be clear, precisely what it means to "involve oneself with the world" is a determination that must be made by each individual. It can look different for different people. One can appear to be withdrawn and isolated externally, while internally focused on helping the creation unfold. From an occult perspective, this form of service may well be done in physical solitude, since the operating environment exists on more subtle planes of existence. For others, service may take the form of a more physical participation in the manifest world.

At any rate, enlightenment isn’t about attaining truth and staying there, physically or psychically. It’s about coming back and involving ourselves in the world to help the creation collectively move towards a higher state of good. This demands both inner work and outer expression. Even when they face resistance, they must navigate the skepticism, fear, and hostility of those who resist the sharing of their wisdom. Let’s remember that Socrates was sentenced to death and Christ died on the cross. They both willingly went to their deaths. Both sacrificed their lives in service of the good.

This brings me to my final point. Sometimes, the experience of life itself is the most powerful teacher. Even when sages, saints, and sacred texts are standing before our eyes, we might not understand their words and may not be inspired to act. Sometimes we have to get hit in the face with an experience to open up to something new. However, not all experiences that lead to truth are going to be perceived as positive. Many are. But others may involve high levels of adversity, persistent strife, and even trauma.

The positive or negative features of an experience may fluctuate over time. An experience that’s initially positive, like the prisoner’s escape, may have unforeseen negative consequences, like the challenges the prisoner faced when returning to the cave. On the other hand, an experience that’s initially perceived as negative, like a traumatic event, may lead to new perspectives, insights, and wisdom that could place someone in a position to help others navigate adversity or make a positive impact on the world.

I’d imagine that a lot of people might not be inclined to think of trauma as an experience of truth. But I do. Experiences like adversity, strife, and trauma are all just as much an aspect of our current reality as are the positive events that help counteract them. I’m not suggesting that trauma is “encouraged” or that such a thing is “good.” What I am suggesting is that traumatic events are an indication of the way that the world actually is, in its present form.

Trauma removes the veil of innocence and exposes us to the harsh realities of our world. The world is no longer “just good” but contains legitimate dangers, flaws, and imperfections. Just as my death experience brought out a contrast between perfection and imperfection, so too can the effects of trauma work in a similar way. It’s crucial that those who’ve experienced trauma first undertake the process of healing from it and integrating the meaning of the event into their lives. It’s through this process that we can become stronger, cultivate wisdom, and start to situate the experience within a broader context. It’s generally in these ladder stages of integration where the valence of a negative event can begin to change and reflect positive attributes.

There’s an esoteric concept known as the “tension of opposites.” This is the idea that seemingly opposing forces are necessary for experience and growth. Light and dark, good and evil, beautiful and wretched. Light cannot exist without darkness because without it there would be no contrasting background for the light to emerge. In Plato’s Cave allegory, we find both sunlight and darkness. However, in order to know absolute truth, these opposites must be embraced and transcended. In other words, both darkness and the light, ignorance and illumination, are to be embraced as aspects of truth. It’s when we can accept the existence of both of these conditions that we become capable of transcending beyond them.

In cultivating spiritual consciousness, there’s an immense value in learning to embrace both the positive and negative aspects of our experiences. Doing so can cultivate a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us. It can teach us to cultivate values like empathy, forgiveness, and compassion. It can also provide us with the wisdom to look at our world for how it actually is in a more realistic view as opposed and an idealistic one. In order to get to the ideal, we have to go through the real.

Peak states of consciousness, like the illumination of coming out of the cave, let us know that there’s an ideal to strive for. Experiences of trauma let us know how deep the tunnels run. And in the spirit of the values of the Bodhisattva and Plato’s philosopher, we gain very little by avoiding the depths of the caves. We have to be willing to go there and lead those who are willing into the light.

In summary, we walked through Plato’s Cave allegory and described some ways that it relates to consciousness and awareness. Being in the cave represents ignorance. Coming out of the cave represents illumination and truth. We talked about some of the challenges that experiencing truth brings with it, both inwardly to ourselves, and relationally from those who resist knowledge and choose to remain in the cave. We discussed the idea of positive and negative experiences, how they can shift and change across time, and how both can contain the seeds of wisdom. We also described how both the darkness of the cave and the light outside represent a more comprehensive truth when both are taken together and the tension of opposites is transcended. In doing so, we can develop greater compassion for the state of our world, cultivate patience as we interact with it, and be of greater service in gradually moving in the direction of the good.

References:

Plato (1989). The Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

[i] From a scholarly standpoint, the context in which I use this quote may draw controversy and requires some clarification. Some contend that Plato’s philosophy is elitist. Here, perhaps, because he refers to compelling the “best natures” as opposed to anyone. As I understand Plato, however, he defines the “best natures” immediately beforehand in passage 519b, referring to those who have freed themselves of the “downward vision of the soul,” rid themselves of false attachments and desires, and who have “suffered a conversion toward the things that are real and true.” He continues in 519c to suggest that those who are “uneducated and inexperienced in truth” (my emphasis) are unfit for societal leadership roles because they lack a “single aim and purpose in life to which all their actions, public and private, must be directed.” Here, he’s implying that turning the soul towards truth, the highest good, is the source of the purest purpose and gives us unwavering strength to maintain a single-pointed focus towards the good. This concept is shared by many Eastern traditions which emphasize maintaining a single-pointed focus towards the divine.