The Allegory Of The Cave

In the Allegory of the Cave there are chained prisoners in cave who can only stare at the cave wall in front of them. At the back there is a long entrance with a staircase the width of the cave and a fire burning in the distance. They see only shadows projected in front of them from a raised platform and hear an echo that they attribute to what they observe. They talk about and name the shadows of objects they see before them. To them the truth are the shadows. Then one day one of the prisoners is released. He is told that what he saw before was an illusion. Once he is outside it takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the sun. First he observed the shadows of thing then their reflection and finally the actual object. Remembering his previous state he goes back to the cave and tries to explain that everything is an illusion but they laugh at him and think he’s crazy. They believe it best not to ascend and they choose to remain as they are. The cave represented opinion. The shadows that are cast on to the wall represented physical objects. The prisoners represented the common people (Welles).

Has someone ever looked at you and immediately disregard you for you are just because of your ethnicity? Have you ever done it someone? Racism is a huge culture issue that we have not only in America, but in other parts of the world, but it does not matter the color of one’s. What really matters is the character they have withheld inside but are not given a chance to express because someone didn’t even bother to give them a chance. This is idea comes from the book written by Plato, “The Allegory of the Cave” where in the book Socrates speaks of man being in a dark cave all their lives not realizing the truth until once they reach the end of the cave to see that the light is the truth. The truth is the reality of life.

Although he wrote many works in his time, Plato 's most famous piece was The Republic. The philosopher created what we know as "the allegory of the cave." Plato once wrote, "How could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?" (Plato) In The Truman Show, created in 1998, the man that controls Truman Burbank 's life says, "We accept the reality of the world with which we 're presented. It 's as simple as that." (Nichol) The allegory portrays mankind as prisoners. Said prisoners are chained up and forced to watch the shadows that are shown on the wall in front of them. Truman Burbank 's entire life was created for him. Even though he believes it to be a reality, Truman 's life is actually a show being broadcast all over the the world to millions of people. To many, The Truman Show is a more understandable take on The Allegory of the Cave. If this were in fact true, then it would surely explain the obvious ways that the two can be compared to one another as well as contrasted.

Religious experiences can be defined as intense emotions or subjective experiences that an individual endures upon sensing or participating in religious functions and activities. Nonetheless, even though these feelings are shared amongst individuals from the same faith, they can be interpreted in a plethora of ways depending on each individual’s experiences. Put differently, members within a religious group elucidate these phenomena through their religious framework, whilst external scholars rely on their own understandings. Consequently, in some situations, it becomes difficult for scholars to comprehend the religious experiences of religious participants, which eventually leads them to explore reasons behind the participation of individuals in religious functions and the significance this imposes on their lives. In “The Varieties of Religious Experience: Religion and Neurology, lecture 1” by William James, religious experiences are examined from a psychological perspective. Mainly, James asserts that experiences are caused by an objective or measurable phenomenon, such as neurochemical signals, which causes extreme emotions whilst participating in religious functions. On the other hand, in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, Robert Sharf criticizes religious experiences as rhetorically to thwart the authority of the objective or the empirical and instead to valorize the subjective,

In “Allegory of the Cave” the main protagonist is a prisoner who is held hostage in a dark cave. This prison is chained up from neck and feet, only allowing him to see straight in front of him. Along with the other prisoners who were also in the cave where the only light that could be seen was that of the fire behind them. Given to us that the only visible object they may see are those of the shadows from the objects carried by those outside of the cave. The prisoners were able to imagine the animals and figures that would pass by allowing them to create an infallible image of what was of the outside world. As time passed the prisoners continue to only visually see shadows passing by. When one of the prisoners was led free and was finally

Others make religion a mere projection of human wishes, a phenomenon that emerges at the

By the time The Republic was written the term had a new meaning. Instead of the method previously described, it was now used to describe what something is. “The Republic stresses that true dialectic is performed by thinking solely of the abstract and nonsensible realm of forms; it requires that reason secure an unhypothetical first principle (the Good) and then derive other results in light of it” (Meinwald). In later dialogues like Parmenides, dialectic is used to understand forms in the proper manner.

I have identified two weaknesses within the argument of religious experience. It is stated that most of their readers have very likely had such an experience. If so, it’s realized in a way that no one else can, its central importance in life (Kreeft & Tacelli, 1994). Since I am a reader I would like to know how is it justified if I have had such an experience or not. This statement isn’t supported by any proof, details, or statistics. It is also stated that some sort of experience lies at the very core of most people’s religious faith. I decided to research further on religious experiences. I found out that there are also cases where religious experience just is an ordinary perception, but the object is itself the object of religious significance (Webb,

“religion sees its primary task as cultivating and nourishing the human soul or spirit,” and that, “each person, according to this view, has inner life that he or she may choose to develop; this inwardness goes deeper than the usual object of psychological investigation and cannot fairly be explained in Freudian or other psychological terms.”

It is probably to define religious or spiritual experiences by their inherent characteristics, with the possible exception of mystical experience. There could not be experience that is religious or spiritual. Whether an experience is religious or spiritual depends on the interpretation of the experience. The most congruent of Jamesian’s tradition of the use of personal documents to understand religious and spiritual experiences has been associated with Religious Experiences Research of Manchester College, Oxford University. Alister Hardy achieved scientific accolade as an important zoologist, but his interest in religious and spiritual experiences led him to form a research unit after his retirement that was dedicated to the collection and classification of such experiences. Hardy’s major classifications included sensory or quasi-sensory experiences associated with vision, hearing and touch, but less frequent were reports of paranormal experiences. The most common ones were cognitive and affective episode, such as a sense of presence or feeling of peace. It may be seems that there is little agreement about what might constitute the common characteristics of religious or spiritual

Seeing the Allegory of the Cave visually affects your sense of imagery. Plato paints a picture of three normal people who are prisoners in a cave. They are unware of the life that isn’t shown to them. They stare at the wall and are shown shadows every once and a while. It shows world of ideal forms, of which everything we know by our senses is but a lower copy. The people talk about it and guess what the shadows are. One day, a prisoner is released from the cave. He is blinded by the light but then his eyes adjust and he sees the truth. After he takes in the real world he goes back to tell the other prisoners. The prisoners are still chained up and do not recognize him. His voice echo’s which they can’t understand it and his shadow doesn’t

In this allegory, we are given a story about an underground cave whose entrance and exit lead to an upward daylight. Behind the cave there is a burning fire for the prisoners. Ever since they were a child, these prisoners are chained to the ground and all they can see is the front of the cave. The burning fire behind them creates a shadow of people passing through the walkway of the cave. These prisoners perceive the shadows and echoes as reality. If we release one prisoner out of the cave, this particular prisoner will be startled with the world outside of the cave. He cannot fathom as to what he is perceiving outside of the cave is real. First, the sun will blind him but eventually he will see the stars, moon, and shadows during the daylight

Based on the aftereffects of a religious near death encounter, Cashwell and Young (2011) report the client senses a biological, psychological, social, and spiritual atmosphere. In regards to senses this spiritual atmosphere, the client begins to manifest changes that evolve around their spiritual awakening such as gaining a fascinating impulse to research the religious/spiritual philosophy and participate in the practices (Cashwell & Young, 2011, p. 107).

While entheogens have been used in spiritual contexts all over the world for thousands of years, Western science has questioned whether an experience induced by a psychoactive substance can result in true spiritual understanding. Mystical experiences are, inherently, difficult to empirically prove, and transcendental states of consciousness and the change in cognitive abilities they produce are not easy to quantify or replicate. Those best able to compare a contemplative mystical experience and a psychoactive-induced mystical experience are the individuals who have participated in both. While there is not a diverse demographic of individuals who have personally experienced both, various spiritual teachers such as Alan Watts, Richard Alpert, Neem Karolie Baba, and Stanislav Grof have spoken of the similarities in phenomenological sensations. Similar changes in neurobiological, sensational, and perceptional differences in the individual with chemical and natural mysticism result in an inability to distinguish an observational difference between the

Finally, James further assesses the positive value of religion just like Jung. However, he evaluates religion in terms of the significance of religious experiences rather than in terms of self-realization. Thus, James uses both a descriptive and an explanatory approach to explain religion’s role in the human consciousness. He emphasizes that mental states of religious experiences can be explained biologically. For instance, he suggests that religious visions are actually epileptic seizures (Kanaris, Psychological and Phenomenological Approaches Final, 19).This kind of emphasis is explanatory because it concerns the origin of a psychological phenomenon. Furthermore, James’s descriptive approach involves dividing mythical states into 2 types: