In Plato’s Republic, there is a famous myth. A group of people are trapped inside of a cave. They have lived their entire lives in the dark. They have never been above ground, and never seenthe sun. For Plato, all human beings are prisoners in this cave.
Inside the cave there is a fire. The prisoners face away from the fire, and only see the wall. When figures pass in front of the flame, they cast shadows onto the wall. The prisoners see the shadows, but they are chained and cannot move, so they take these shadows to be reality. When one of them breaks free and turns around, he notices that the fire has been his source of sight all along. It has created illusions from the realities behind him.
This myth is not only about great metaphysical questions, but everyday realities and the illusions they create. When we are in a certain state of mind or body, our world is recreated by that state. Our presence of mind lights a fire inside of us, and everything that passes across our attention is cast into the world by the light of that fire. Everything becomes a shadow of our mood. We can’t see the mood itself because it’s the source of light for everything we see. We get trapped inside of it, thinking it’s just the way the world is, and not the way we are perceiving it.
Sometimes, when we’re very lucky, someone who loves us can catch sight of our fire, and help us to see the shadows it casts. But when we’re alone, our fire often engulfs us, and we cannot distinguish shadows from realities. We need tools that can show us the shapes of these shadows, and remind us that the fire exists, and invite us to look around at it.
This is the purpose of AGNi.