We are not free. Far from it.
We are told about Economic freedom - Freedom of association - Freedom of movement - - Freedom of speech - Freedom of the press - Freedom of thought.
We are told about all the possible manifestations of freedom. This is our way to avoid talking about freedom itself. We have the same problem with ‘life’. We talk about the manifestations of life and avoid talking about life itself.
It is the same problem that we have with consciousness, life, love…. We want them. We long for them. We spend our life searching for them, but we can never really reach them.
There is a zoo, in the Netherland, where the visitors are kept in a very dark hallway. They can barely see each other. Along the hallway are open windows. Through one of the windows, you can see birds flying around in a well-lit room. There is nothing to prevent the birds from flying through the open window and joining you in the hallway. Nothing except the light. The birds stay in the well-lit room and don't want to explore the darkness they can see outside. The birds are prisoners of the light. Their eyesight that allows them to see the world can also be their jail. This also applies to humans. Our senses can become our jail.
Through another window you can see snakes. There is nothing between you and the snakes, except some ice. The snakes don't come through the window looking for lunch because they would have to go over the ice. The snakes don't like the cold. They are prisoners of heat.
Those animals don't know that they are kept prisoner. They would have to get outside their cage to realize that there is a cage.
We are prisoners of our senses like the birds are prisoners of the light and the snakes are prisoners of heat. We are prisoner of our eyesight, our hearing, our temperature, the air that we breathe… We are prisoners of our body.
- Bergson said that our life is littered with all the personalities that we could have been. All through our life we make choices, and we become prisoners of those choices. As you get older, changing profession becomes more and more difficult.
We need to live in society. Sometimes, the society may have to prevail over the individual. We need some laws. Every time we make a law, we remove some freedom and replace it with a rule. The more rules, the less freedom is left to the individual.
Do you remember Plato's allegory of the cave?
QUESTION 6: The gist of our life
17 - What is freedom
It was in the third century BC that Plato wrote his famous allegory of the cave. His concern was the importance of education in our life. To solve a problem is to become conscious of its solution. Education develops our consciousness. We only have to replace his cave with consciousness and his allegory will apply to our 21st century.
Plato imagined people who spent all their life in a cave. All they can do is to watch shadows on the wall in front of them. The shadows are their “reality”. One day, one of them is set free to turn around and look behind him. He discovers a fire and symbols being moved in front of the fire. What he could see on the wall was only a shadow. His reality was only a mirage.
The next step was to let our explorer leave the cave. He discovers the outside world. He discovers a new ‘reality’, a new freedom, and a new consciousness. It seems (to us and today) that freedom and consciousness come together. We cannot blame the people in the cave for not being conscious of a freedom that they never experienced. We are conscious of freedom when we experience it.
Plato’s message is that we are prisoners and should get out of our jail. Let’s get out of our 5% of the material world. Plato would approve!
That may be one of the purposes of our life on earth: We must regain our freedom.
Let us add another chapter to Plato’s allegory:
Plato makes his explorer go back to his cave to help his fellow men.
That is very commendable, but we will try another ending. Let’s assume that our explorer decides to stay outside the cave. You can guess what happens. He meets a woman and falls in love. He becomes conscious of new feelings and a new reality.
The woman made him conscious of feelings he could not have imagined. He discovers that his first cave was inside a bigger cave, itself inside another bigger cave. We could say that he was climbing a staircase, and every step up widened his consciousness
Let us water the little seeds:
Freedom, consciousness, and love were already buried in our explorer like seeds waiting to be watered. What happened inside him was like what happened in the nature around him. Seeds are buried in the ground like he was buried in his cave. If you don’t water the seeds, nothing comes out. Nature waters them. They rise. Seeds discover the sunlight and grow in a different world. It is their new reality.
Consciously or not, we keep watering little seeds buried in our subconscious. Pushing the envelope of our consciousness is a source of happiness.
Every stress in our life is an opportunity to bring something to the surface that will help us overcome our problems. This is how we water our little seeds. This is how we push the envelope of our freedom. The criterion of success is a feeling of happiness.
Let us add another chapter to Plato’s allegory of the cave:
The first chapter that we added was about the love of one person. Plato already knew what would come next. It is the ‘platonic’ love. That means a feeling of love that does not need help from another human being. It is detached from the material world. It is the love of the whole universe! It is what people are looking for when gardening gives them a feeling of increased common sense, or they find peace and harmony from their flowers or from their cat. This love penetrates the world like the wind goes through a tree - without getting attached to it.
What makes humans feel alive is the watering some seeds already existing deep in their soul, such as freedom, consciousness, love. It is by developing them that we can become conscious of a new reality.
What Plato did not tell us is that we have a problem. We water everything: Not only the seeds but also the weeds. Everything grows in our garden - the good and the bad.