About the site

Curriculum vitae

The Book

Books archive

First Drafts

Lola's diary

Free-writing

Links

contact Jeremy
contact Ellen

In Plato's allegory of the cave, the philosopher must free himself from the shackles which hold him in the cave, and struggle out to the light of day. I had never thought about this before, but the story of the cave really presages the story of Christ's resurrection -- substitute Death for Ignorance, and Christ's emergence from the tomb parallels the philosopher's entry into the world of ideas.

What brought this to mind was the poem "Sermon", written by my friend Fred Harris, which I read on Saturday. The poem ends with an exhortation to the reader, to become like Christ, risen; to throw off one's shroud and roll aside the stone from the entrance of one's tomb. (I'm not quoting because I don't have the exact text. If I can get a copy of the poem and Fred's permission, I will post it.) That exhortation brought the resurrection story in line with Plato for me.

I'm wondering now, why I haven't heard that exhortation from the church -- I think if I had heard it as a young man, I might have been more interested in religion than I ended up being. It was certainly the prospect of enlightenment that interested me in eastern mysticism -- an interest that I admittedly never followed through on. There are mystical sects of Christianity; perhaps I should find out about Gnosticism for more thinking along these lines. My friend Kai, who is German, recommends Höhlenausgänge ("Coming out of the Cave", approximately), by Hans Blumenfeld; however it has not yet been translated -- I don't quite feel up to that level of reading German, yet.