Appearance and Reality: The World and Its Chains

Man lives not in a cave, but behind a fence. We are chained, and see wonderful things beyond the fence, but few see the fence. And how quickly do we stop even noticing that it is there!

The masses look quickly beyond, and delude themselves for all their lives that the world beyond the fence is the real one. Few realize the fact that we are chained, to walls and through fences, and we shall never escape.

Fewer than these few both see the chains and come to love them. Graced with a wisdom not of their time, they accept the inevitable and live happily with their chains, knowing full well that they are a necessity of life itself. For, just think: what is real? If we will not be free of the fence nor the chains for all of life, then bondage becomes as real and as necessary as food and water.

However, there is a problem. We, who are bound, know how to communicate our ideas about bondage, and thereby enslave ourselves even further. Unfortunately, life has this tendency to wrap around itself, so “society” is born, and with it, new chains. How do these new chains compare to the old? Woe to mankind, who bring endless misery unto themselves! These imaginary constrictions, although no more real than the world beyond the fence, endlessly confuse the unwise in how closely they resemble the truth.