Fourth Form of Madness

Perhaps one of my favourite parts of Plato’s work is his two world theory. Plato believed there was a world of “forms” and then there was this world we inhabit which only contains representations of the world of forms, a paler, lesser version. So for example, in this world there are many chairs, and you know when you are looking at a chair no matter what shape or size it comes in. But how are we able to distinguish them all as chairs when they are so different? Plato believed that this was because in the world of forms there was a pure concept of a chair that our souls were able to glimpse before our inception and that these pure concepts, remembered in our soul, were what enable us to identify lesser, paler, watered down versions of the same thing in this world.

The two world principle also applies for things like love, courage, truth, justice and so forth. Our souls have seen their pure form before our inception and long to be reunited with them, as these pure forms are heartbreaking beautiful and intoxicating, so much so that they spark a yearning deep within the soul. Whenever we come across something that reminds our soul of the pure form, whether it be beauty in this world, truth or justice, the yearning is kindled even more. However, Plato believed that this ability to recognise the true forms is hampered in this world as our senses give us a murky, muddy image and cloud our perception. Beauty is supposedly the easiest to identify, whenever we see something beautiful in this world, it agitates the soul and makes it yearn for the higher, pure form of beauty. It is this yearning, this passion, that inspires us to go forward in our search for truth, and the one that has always interested me the most, love.

Love has always intrigued me as I used to think of it is a very abstract concept. It has been so romanticised and glamorised that I am surprised that we can recognise it at all underneath all the hype and noise. How do you know what love is and that your concept of love is the same as the next person’s or indeed the person you are loving. Is it a selfless act of giving, caring, being? Perhaps love flows from the right thoughts translating into the right words and manifesting into the right actions. Aligning of all these parts of self so that they sing in harmony and resonate beauty.

Then recently I witnessed love, beauty, truth and courage all in one moment. My father recently passed away after a short battle with a very aggressive cancer. For the last four month of his life he was bedridden as the cancer had spread to his spine. My mother, brother and I took turns with sitting with him so that someone was with him every day and in the final days we all slept in his room on whatever patch of floor we could find so that we were there for him. On one of the nights, I was resting on the floor trying to get a few minutes sleep and I heard my father’s breathing change dramatically. I had promised him that I would be with him so I went to get up to be by his side. But then I saw my mother sitting beside my father, holding his hand and wetting his lips with a wet swab. I knew she had gotten no sleep for the last 2 days and i knew her heart was breaking over having to say goodbye to her best friend of 48 years. And I knew that only months earlier she doubted her ability to be so strong and courageous as this situation demanded. Yet there she was, a vision of pure beauty and love and grace, holding my father’s hand and whispering words of comfort and love to him. It was so heartbreaking beautiful that I respectfully lowered my eyes. That was love in action and it is quite impossible to misinterpret it.

For this reason I have come to believe perhaps love is an active thing that is defined best by actions rather than emotive words. It was never meant to be a stagnate concept for defining or lamenting but an active dynamic way of living. When love unfolds, when you get a glimpse of it, your soul does remember and starts to yearn for its purest form.

I love Socrates and Plato. As a philosophy student I still remember when I first started to explore these writings in an Ancient Greece class I took. I didn’t want to take the class, I thought it was going to be dry and boring. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Their writings on the soul and love and indeed, the “fourth form of madness”, breathed air into my life and beauty into my being. I always used to say, in my then drama queen way to one of my dear friends, that I loved picking up a new book as each time I wasn’t sure whether it would be this book that changed my life! These books changed mine, or at least changed the seat I was viewing life from (as life pretty much stays the same regardless).

There is considerable debate whether Plato and Socrates were the same person, a “writing’s name” for Plato so to speak. My belief is that they were two people, Socrates the exemplarily human being, if you will I guess an enlightened human being, like Buddah, Jesus or Muhammad. Plato was Socrates brilliant and devoted student who wrote down Socrates every word and then in Plato’s later work, expanded on these words with his own.

I love this pure unfettered “pass it on” sharing of knowledge. You see it in a lot of traditions and there is indeed real beauty in it. Knowledge is never owned, it simply has no value when kept to yourself and used to build your self-identity or add to your elusive self esteem (really what are these pshyco based terms anyway?). When shared, as you as it servant, it becomes a living thing, a dynamic beauty, the most glorious art that could never be captured in a painting, music or words. Although these things can take you a good way there, but never quite home. They will always be a paler version of the real thing. Indeed life is only to be found in the living, the real acceptance of living and all it brings, and never on the page or the canvas or a song sheet.

I’m not big on technology, it’s not really my area. I find the hardest thing about teaching a hot yoga class is pre-setting the panels to come on at a future date. So Friday night I was thrilled that at the end of the power/restore class I remembered to set it for my teacher’s early Saturday morning class. This was no mean feat, by the end of the restore session of the class I’m always ready for a warm mug of tea and bed. This Friday I was in a particular mellow and subdued mood so as I chatted and locked up with the last few to leave class, I was also mentally chanting to myself, “preset the panels, preset the panels, preset the panels”.

I was so proud of myself for remembering that I promptly walked out without remembering to shut the door of the yoga room to keep in the heat when the panels came on at 6am. That was until 2.30am in the next morning. I woke up with an uneasy feeling. Something was off centre. My dog snored gently beside me…..he was definitely okay. As I often do when I can’t sleep I mentally went through a class in my head (it kind of relaxes me). It was half way through my mental warmup that it popped into my head, a vision of the yoga room door wide open. Bum! That was not going to be good for the hot class at 7.30am or the studio heating bill.

I was about to get up and drive to the studio and close the door (I blame the adrenaline rush that comes with knowing that you have done something not so ideal), when I realised tromping around in the middle of the night in the middle of the countryside (okay not quite countryside but countrysideish) was not such a sound idea. Instead I set my alarm to 5.30am and drifted back to sleep. Upon which I tossed and turned haunted by a dream that I was only afforded glimpses of upon waking. So I was in a bit of a frazzled and slightly worn out state when my alarm went off at 5.30am.

My dog sprang into action at the sound of the alarm and by the time I threw on a pair of jeans and wrestled myself into a jersey, he was practically doing back flips at the thought of an unexpected but welcome early morning walk. Then I grabbed my car keys and he went into a frenzy walking on his hind legs and turning circles in front of me. My dog loves a car ride and there was no way I was going on that one alone. I opened the garage door and ran out like a shot and waited for me to open his side of the car. Since I got my little orange car (which I have fallen in love with – week 9 and still no sign of a new door for the jeep that was broken into) taking puppy dog for a ride is a funny event. If he jumps over into the back seat, his butt is too large to jump back through the same gap on the way back so it takes about 5 hours to get him out of the car.

Not this journey, he proudly sat in the seat beside me and there we were cruising along to yoga together. It felt kind of cool. And then it happened, my dog reminded me about the innate joy in life. I had rolled down the window, despite it being coolish outside, as I could tell he wanted to stick his head out and catch the wind in his mouth. I glanced in his direction to make sure he wasn’t hanging too far out of the window, and there I saw it, pure joy as his fur was stuck back on his face and his eyes wide and his mouth wider due to catching the wind, pure joy, enjoying whatever life brought. It only took one look and I got it, saw it and remembered it in every cell in my body – the joy of being alive, of having this consciousness come what may.

Often on this journey we oscillate back and forward, back and forward, between remembering, forgetting, then remembering again. It was nice to given this chance to remember again with my dog this time as my teacher. So as I shut the door I had left open and hopped back into my car, I felt like I had done my yoga class already that day and as I drove home to start getting ready for my morning practice, I rolled down my window a bit and let life in.