The prisoner of Plato's cave that must - through the inmost resolve, energy, insight and "conversion" - completely and utterly turn away from the realm of shadows and make for the tunnel and its exit into the realm of truth, being and light. It is only after there has been a vision of the truth that one can begin to "explain" or "interpret" the shadows - which becomes in itself a very little importance but important to those prisoners who unable to convert and liberate themselves. The exit from the world is also a complete exit from human individuality, selfhood and its modes of cognition, volition, perception and feeling. It is not about transforming or purifying or working on these. But about abandoning them utterly and altogether and in every aspect and dimension. Approaching the realm of light and love we gain a new spiritual version of all of these which is yet incommensurable with the old. We can describe the modes of this realm of light as one of infinite beauty, intimacy, interconnection (sunekhês), communion, delicacy, refinement, subtlety, luminous visions, passivity, peace, expansiveness, depth, full of the secret ineffable utterances of sublime wisdom and also a living flame of love. "Linguistic expression", "memory", "logic", "mathematics" and "knowledge" likewise acquire an infinitely new meaning. The memory of the light can illumine and inform and direct the studies carried out in the cave - but these studies in themselves can never liberate or lead to that which is incommensurable to them. Phenomenology in itself can never progress into spiritual science or absolute knowledge. Rather it has to be derived from it. Thus we argue that the initial stage of dialectic in Plotinus can only be one of persuasion, argumentation and instigation to effect the inmost resolve and energy for the complete conversion. A short-circuiting of all the old circuits. A critique of the shadows rather than of the idea of going beyond the shadows.
No comments:
Post a Comment