Labyrinths are mystery incarnate. They lead to nowhere and everywhere, they fork and converge and then fork again, they are circular, and lead back to the beginning, never giving away the secret of the end. They withhold, they stay mute, they imbue silence and quiet, they speak of nothing. They replicate, they are symmetrical, they are harmonious, they follow a pattern, a mathamatical precision. They lead and and mislead, they show the way only to confuse and numb the mind. Labyrinths are alive and breathing, thinking, manipulating, bewitching, be-numbing all those who are unfortunate to step inside them.
Where are labryinths to be found? There are those specifically planned and built like the ones talked of in the Greek myths. The famous labryinth of the King Minos of Crete at Knossos designed by Deadalus where the Minotaur was held (half man half bull,) eventually killed by the Greek hero Theseus. The ancient world holds stories of four labyrinths. But my question here is different, I want to know if the labyrithine pathways, endless trains of thoughts and possible modes of actions, if contradictions and paradoxes, if stunning consistencies and differences exist within the same mind and soul, whether one person is as complicated as a maze, a puzzle, a kind of a riddle to be solved and to be worked from the inside out? or, is man a simple creature? is knowing and understanding the basic nature of a man enough to grasp the key to the heart of men, and have access to their soul?
Of course from the medical point of view mind of man is a complex machine. It is beyond complete human comprehension even with the advanced technology and scientific information that is available with us now, for the mind cannot totally comprehend its own self. Do other living things such as plants and animals have souls? Plato believed so. He developed a theory of 'transmigration of souls' which states that souls have existed eternally. They have been there before other things came into being, perhaps before even this universe came into existence. They finish at death, but they do not cease to exist, they are reborn or transmigrate to another form in a new life as an animal or a plant or an insect, or another human being. But they do retain knowledge in their subconcious from previous lives, and hence all learning is therefore a kind of 'recollection' of what we already know, as Plato makes Socrates demonstrate with an experiment with Meno's slave in Meno (one of his dialogues.)
So if we have a complicated machine for a mind, that is brain per se, and we have lived endless lives as hundreds of beings and have had mutifarious experiences and life incidents, and carry all those inside us somewhere hidden, embedded in the fabric of who we are, it makes us not only highly layered in thought and personality it makes us multiple in facets. We are not one person, rather there cannot exist one side to us! we have to be at one time several persons all rolled up, stuffed in one body conflicting with one another, trying to emerge out, vying for attention. How do we then figure out who the real us or I is?
Hard job it is. To follow Socrates' dictum and go on a quest of self discovery of 'Knowing Thyself.'
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