Читать книгу A book in answers - Th. Om - Страница 17

The source of things?

There are a multitude of words, that provide excellent groundwork for filtering the source of things out of you. Let's ignore the terms such as love, trust, compassion and positive things, which have certainly never been described in full in their glory - let's use an "everyday" word. One, that receives the utmost respect in this system of thought we live. We talk about the "point of view".

Uncertainty?

"My opinion, my view of things, logical fact, statistically proven, according to all conjectures, according to the latest calculations, it has been proven, scientists have confirmed ..." Do you notice something? Do you also feel this gigantic uncertainty? Can you smell it? There is nothing in these formulations, that would give even a little bit of support. There is no fixed point.

Archimedes?

“Dos moi pou sto kino kino taen gaen!” “Give me a point where I can step and I will unhinge the earth!” Archimedes already suspected it. What the good old philosopher tried to clarify, far from physics, is, that no conceptuality, no word picture, no thought picture - nothing from which we can draw our view of the world - has any real reality. The truth - it is simply missing. It cannot exist in this way of thinking.

Insane arrogance?

What Archimedes, and after him other enlightened ones, tries to put into words, is the gigantic arrogance, that - in the sense of the explanatory thought structure - lies in the word “point of view”. To see this, we have to get to the bottom of the point of view, so to speak. How does a point of view come about? Where the fuck did he come from? Ahhh! Naturally! There they, the people, are quick to answer. “The knowledge!” You say with a triumphant smile. “The experience!”

Take a step back?

You completely misunderstand how ridiculous this statement actually is. Just take a step back. Well. Now consider yourself as a thinking, educated, person and figure out, what you think you know. Fine. Set the knowledge, only all the knowledge of this world, this system of thought, against it. No! Don't run away now! Look at, that! And tell me something again about the term “point of view”.

Compulsion to understand?

Are there fears? Yes. What you are feeling there now - is your fear of life. Because you live in the very immediate compulsion to have to understand, to accumulate knowledge, to behave appropriately. And everything, that happens, results out of your knowledge, the knowledge you construct from the fact of your filtered information to which you have access, in whatever degenerate form, and then put together to an image, a "point of view". Your knowledge is perfect and through and through - subjective.

Tiniest fragment?

And not only, that. It is just an all too tiny fragment of the cosmic knowledge in duality. And, like all elements in duality, it is a soap bubble, created from the very first decision, made out of the free will of the child of God, that there can be a good and an evil. You cannot see the size of your error. Since we have already used a giant from antiquity, another representative should now come to our aid.

In Politeia Socrates tells his interlocutors Glaucon and Adeimantos, the two brothers of Plato, the parable of the prisoners in the cave.

Socrates describes an underground, cave-like dwelling, from which a rough and steep passage leads up to the surface of the earth. The passage is a shaft, that corresponds in height and width to the cave. People who have been prisoners there all their lives live in the cave. While they are sitting, they are tied at the thighs and neck so, that they can only look forward at the cave wall and cannot turn their heads. Therefore, they can never see the exit behind their backs and know nothing of its existence. They cannot see themselves or the other prisoners either; the only thing they ever see is the wall they are facing. Their dwelling is illuminated by a fire, that burns far up in the distance behind them. The prisoners only see this light, that illuminates the wall, not its source. They see shadows on the wall.

Between the inside of the prison and the fire is a small wall, that is not high enough to block the light from the fire. Along the wall, people carry different objects back and forth, replicas of human figures and other living beings made of stone and wood. These objects protrude beyond the wall, but their bearers do not. Some porters talk to each other, others are silent.

Since the moving objects cast shadows on the cave wall, that the prisoners are facing, the cave dwellers can perceive the moving shapes as shadows. But they suspect nothing of the porters. When someone speaks, the echo echoes back from the cave wall as if the shadows were speaking. Hence the prisoners believe, that the shadows can speak. They regard the shadows as living beings and interpret everything, that happens as their actions. What happens on the wall is for them the whole of reality and is absolutely true. They develop a science of the shadows and try to determine laws in their appearance and movements and derive prognoses from them. They give praise and honor to those who make the best predictions.

Socrates now asks Glaucon to imagine what would happen if one of the prisoners were untied and forced to stand up, turn around, look at the exit and turn to the objects themselves, the shadows of which he has observed so far. That person would be painfully blinded and confused by the light. She would consider the things, that came into her field of vision to be less real than the familiar shadows. Therefore, she would need to resume her usual position, because she would be convinced, that reality could only be found on the cave wall. She would not believe contrary teachings from a benevolent liberator.

If you dragged the freed man out of the cave by force and brought him to the surface through the impassable and steep ascent, he would resist and would be even more confused, because he would be blinded by the shine of the sunlight and therefore could not see anything at first. Slowly he would have to get used to the sight of the new, whereby he could first recognize shadows, then reflections in the water and finally people and things themselves.

Looking up, he would first want to familiarize himself with the night sky, later with the daylight, and finally he would dare to look directly at the sun and perceive its nature. Then he could also understand, that it is the sun whose light creates shadows. After these experiences and insights he would have no need to return to the cave, to deal with the shadow science there and to be praised by the prisoners for it.

Should he nevertheless return to his old place, he would first have to slowly get used to the darkness of the cave. Therefore, he would do poorly for some time in the usual assessment of the shadows. The cave dwellers would conclude from this, that he had ruined his eyes above. They would laugh at him and say, that it would obviously not be worthwhile to leave the cave even for a try. If someone tried to free them and lead them upstairs, they would kill him if they could.

Summary

Before I am lynched, I will end this consideration. What is perfectly clear, anyone, who is concerned with this thought, certainly feels a kind of hopelessness, the situation seems clarified and hopeless. Yes OK. We are blind, we only see shadows. Finished. The good news: Each of us is where we are, in our life, on the right path. Completely.