Plato's Cave
How could they see anything but shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?-Plato
But as we know, what ultimately determines meaning is not dictionary definitions or someone else’s theories and experiences, rather, meaning and definitions are derived after experiences, or as a result of what has been discovered or learned because of experience.
—Bernadette Roberts, What Is Self?
The light of logic can only take us so far. It was theorized by Carmelite nun Bernadette Roberts that the ego has been much maligned. It sits at the center of self-consciousness and a well-developed ego goes in pursuit of God, the beautiful, the good, the one or the monad, or truth. A bad ego cares only for itself and reaps only the rewards that a lone self in a vast universe can bring.
Ultimately, it is a suicide run because the question can never become the answer. In the same way that Jesus bared the cross, we must also bear the cross of selfhood. There must be something worth crucifying at the end of the journey. A fat, healthy, and well-developed ego is the perfect golden calf to be slaughtered.
One cannot talk about no-ego until the ego drops away. Only in the absence of what was—can what is—be revealed. The loss of ego has been described as the unitive state by Roberts or Cosmic Consciousness by Bucke. The Canadian doctor believed that the best among us operated in a state of union with God or the Tao or whatever you thought was not the real you. Dante, Balzac, Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson…
Pythagoras and Plato believed that philosophy could lead one to the very edge of what the ego could experience. Philosophy is King until the mystic philosopher is born. To explain the point, Plato uses the analogy of the cave. A man lies chained and takes the passing picture show of shadowy images to be life. We are the man in Plato’s cave.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
—Thoreau, Walden
Life as we know it, is not life as it is. The prisoner in Plato’s cave turns his head and discovers that the chains were never locked. He merely thought they were. Thinking things to be is as effective a deterrent as physical incarceration.
A great choice now lies for the freed prisoner. Shall he spend the rest of his life in the cave? Will he rise and explore its depths? He could consider himself done and never leave his seat. Or he could become a teacher about leaving the cave all while never leaving. After all, there appears to be other people who are no longer bound.
The experience of no-self lives somewhere outside. Courtesy of the dawning sun. Outside is outside. And there will always be more dawns.
"A fat healthy and well developed ego is the perfect golden calf to be slaughtered." Therein lies the human conundrum or there is the blessing of being a human. That's the Choice. "This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it."