From Illusion To Reality

From Illusion To
Reality

In his Republic, circa 380 BC E, Plato used a metaphor called the Allegory of the Cave to describe the multidimensional reality of the Cosmos in which we “live and move and have our being.” The metaphor has people in chains sitting in front of a blank wall. There is a fire behind them and all sorts and manners of things and objects pass on a raised platform in front to the fire casting shadows on the wall. The chained people, unable to turn their heads, see only the shadows directly in front of them. For these folks, the shadows of the objects passing behind them are reality.

The allegory goes on to relate how one prisoner is freed and, at first blinded by the light of the fire, is eventually able to see the things that were behind him. Eventually, having been dragged by the philosopher up the path into greater light, which involves the painful releasing of a continual string of illusion regarding the REAL, they finally reach the caves mouth. Again after a period of adjustment, the prisoner sees the Sun.

The prisoner now freed from his illusions of reality wants to free the rest of the prisoners too. So, he goes back into the cave to release the others. He is of course now blinded by the lack of light and the prisoners conclude that the exposure to light is painful and anyway, because of all of the totally weird stuff he is telling them about, he is nuts. They decide that they should get rid of him.

As we all know, Socrates was executed by the Establishment and Plato was sold into slavery.

The allegory is a metaphorical representation, an effort on the part of Plato to communicate what The Wise Ones have always known and a developing hard science has been trying to tell us since the Renascence. We of course know what happened to Galileo when he tried to point out to the Establishment that the Sun was the center of the solar system, a fact that had been know and demonstrated for a several thousand years.

This issue, the difference between the REAL and illusion, has been at the core of humanities struggle from the beginning. Plato, a Master of the Wisdom who along with another Master whom we know as Socrates, was Teaching in Athens. In his Allegory of the Cave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave Plato, who was totally conscious of the fact of the multidimensional universe, using the only tools available, metaphor and the dialectic, demonstrated with utter clarity the infinite unbroken chain  of thought which links the dimensions of Energy or Reality with the thought created dense material forms which make up the material world.

The further removed from the Idea, the deeper into the cave of illusion, the less real is the formulation. The greater the striving to manifest the Idea in its purest possible form, the more accurate or Beautiful is the representation of Truth. As another visionary teacher/poet pointed out, “Beauty is Truth and Truth is Beauty”. We do not expect that individuals who are still living in the cave of intellectual ignorance to understand this simple statement of the REAL. Only the heart can comprehend a metaphor.

To say that to strive to build systems and character that more and more clearly out picture the Images of Truth, Ideas like Liberty, Freedom Equality, Justice, is unrealistic, is simply ignorance. It is to deny humans that which makes them human. The allegory is thus the story of every individual who has ever brought Light into the darkness of the great illusion of reality which imprisons us in a cave of ignorance, a cave from which we, humanity, have been struggling to free ourselves since the Beginning.

Basically, Truth consists of what we think of today as the Laws of Cosmic Physics. For Plato these Laws were embodied in a number of totally abstract, that is formless, IDEAS, which exist in the “formless world of Being”. These ideas are simply “images” of Truth such as Beauty, Justice, Liberty. These Truths, are eternal and everywhere present in Cosmos.

The Plato/Socrates Teaching and the revelations that accompanied them were deemed by the then Establishment to be “corrupting the youth of Athens.” (Truth always seems to have this “corrupting” effect, that is the determination to get out of the Establishment’s cave,  on the still alive ones. Youth has little to do with chronological age. It is a matter of Consciousness. The Wise Ones are always like little children, pure, loving, inclusive fearless, whole hearted…) Subsequently Socrates, who was the apparent Head of the Academy, was tried for these crimes, found guilty and sentenced to death. Plato was eventually sold into slavery.

This of course is the Establishment’s old age way of getting rid of “trouble makers”, those who would dare reveal the Truth. Incidentally in cases where mock trials are not available there is no hesitation to use assassination or murder. Think of Martin King and the Kennedys.

Today the present incarnation of the ancient Establishment seeks the control of the U.S. and desires to return the entire Planet to the rule of the “Deserving Few”. The DF’s are employing the ancient tools of materialism to continue to block humanity’s evolution. Basically, they maintain that if one cannot weigh or put a coat of paint on something it does not exist; it is not “real”. So all of the IDEAS upon which human evolution is based and toward which we have, forever, been striving are “idealistic”, dreams, fairy tales which are not achievable because they do not exist.

The Deserving Few mask their halfway hearts through the distortion and manipulation of common sense which they ironically refer to as “hardheadedness”.  While protecting their own wealth, prestige and position, they wear the sheep skin of being practical, hard-nosed “realists”. Those who strive for Principles are denigrated as foolish Idealists. Nice people, but they are just unreal. They believe in dreams of liberty and freedom for all which is an unachievable dream. And in its place the Hard Heads offer what they call practical or pragmatic, achievable things.

Their positions are natural effects of their mind identification with a one dimensional material world which they see as REAL. They are not necessarily evil, but in the ignorance of their intellectual fixations and the inability to see Reality, they consider concepts like Liberty and Justice to be non-sense. They point to the fact that such things are only ideal dreams, the do not exist.

The intellect rather than the heart drives their plans. Only the Heart can comprehend a metaphor, or the Plan.

The greatest hindrance to the evolution of either an individual or Humanity as a whole is the identification with where we are, our comfort with what we have either material stuff or our conclusions about what constitutes reality and value. Try getting a lover of gold to see that the gold is just a metal, a relatively dense form of matter, and that possession of multiple tons of it does not and will not make him a better person. Or try releasing a fanatic of this or that religion. Like the dinosaurs of old, they are trapped and dying in their canyons of comfort.

As was said long ago, “From the beginning they struggled, From the beginning we conquered!” We will  not be dying with them!

Ideas are not dreams. Ideas are “images of truth”. “… the images of Truth, which you call ideas, rule the karma of the world. It is astonishing to see how images of Truth participate in the spatial battle. While the multitudes disintegrate in a blind fury of ignorance and betrayal, the thoughts of Truth weave their heavenly nests, which for real evolution are far more vital than any worship by entire nations.” Agni Yoga #122

Tom, February 2016