Rudi/Artos: "It most certainly is in the world of common day!"
The Triple Goddess: "Yes, it is...That is the shadow it throws there, and those in the cave see it on the wall. And it is true, what they see."
I have re-presented as a dramatic dialogue part of a conversation in SM Stirling, The Given Sacrifice (New York, 2014), Chapter Seventeen, pp. 362-363.
The Goddess refers to Plato's Cave - thus, more philosophy - although I do not think that Plato would describe the "shadows" as true. I still want to know why a disagreement within the tranescosmic Mind becomes a war between good and evil on the human level but I expect more explanation as we proceed.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I like the allusions Stirling makes to Plato! Not many fiction writers these days are so literate, alas. And again I thought of Charles Williams THE PLACE OF THE LION. Albeit that book probably requires readers to be more familiar with Plato than most are today.
Sean
Remember the fable of the blind men and the elephant; each has a vision which is incomplete... but true as far as it goes. The reason the Powers have to talk to Rudi indirectly is that they're talking about matters beyond human comprehension -- it is -literally- impossible to describe them fully for the same reason you couldn't explain the differences between, say, libertarianism and social democracy to a dog.
Mr Stirling,
Thank you. I can buy that up to a point. Equally, my brain keeps working.
Reality is like an infinite plane (or, indeed, plain). Human knowledge is a finite but growing circle somewhere on the plane. As the circle grows, its area (the number of things known) grows but its circumference (the point of contact with the unknown) also grows. Thus, the more we know, the more we realize how little we know and this will always be the case. I have heard Ph.D. students say that, every time they open a book, they realize how little they know. People with a small circle have a small circumference and often have no idea how little they know. Real life is on the circumference: at the cutting edge of the sciences, in artistic creation and meditation.
Paul.
In our meditation group, we recite a scripture that says, "Do not spend so much time in rubbing only a part of the elephant..."
True, but in this case it isn't only a matter of knowing, but of one's inherent capacity to understand.
You can present the dog with all the information in the world, but it won't -understand- it because of the inherent limitations of its brain.
Human beings have more capable brains than dogs. But not infinitely so.
On the other hand, dogs understand some things just as well as we do -- love, hate, social status.
The Powers Rudi is talking to aren't withholding information, they're dealing with different orders and levels of consciousness. They can grasp things he can't, so they have to deal with him in terms he can grasp.
The min-body question/problem might be one that we are inherently unable to understand.
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