There
is a cave in which human beings are chained into as prisoners.
They are chained facing the wall so all they
ever see are shadows cast
on the cave walls by fires burning behind them.
What they know of the
world are the curious dance of shadows
and light moving about.
One day, one of the prisoners escapes the cave
and manages
to see the full light of day when he reaches
the mouth of the cave.
He is amazed by the brightness of the sun and
returns to the cave to
tell his fellow prisoners what he has seen.
The other prisoners do not
believe the story about a world beyond the cave
and especially of
something as bright as the sun. They cannot because
it is impossible for
them to imagine anything so stupendous and extraordinary.
The escaped man
is disappointed by his friends' reaction but
he does not give up. He
continues to come back to give them news about
a world outside.
This
is of course a metaphor for human ignorance and understanding.
We are those chained to the wall. We think our
material world is the true
world when in fact they are mere shadows of much
realer things. We also fail
to believe when someone comes back with ideas
of a different order simply
because they do not coincide with what we already
know. Nevertheless, our
redemption - if we may use the word - stems precisely
from the fact that
someone brings us news about a bigger reality
of which we may all partake.
This bigger world is of a divine nature of which
we are inherently part of
but have long forgotten so deeply enchained are
we to the ignorance of the cave.
