3 BLIND MEN & AN Elephant
The story of the blind men and the elephant is a metaphorical tale. It explores how people can see the same thing from a lot of different perspectives but they are all telling the truth.
This metaphorical story was intended to make people less confrontational about their different religions “he who has seen the lord in a certain way limits the lord to his experiences “ .
This is also an example of the relativism of reality.
The reason that you can lose touch with reality is that there is no reality at all, only relative perspectives and experiences. It’s only a belief that everyone sees the world the same way, when obviously time is relative and experience is relative.
This enlightening metaphorical story of the blind men and the elephant, shows you the many different viewpoints on a topic. In some variations of the story a deaf man is also asked for his perspective. And just as the blind men cannot see the elephant so also if someone was deaf they could see the elephant but not hear it, which would give another perspective. A different viewpoint again might come from someone suffering schizophrenic symptoms, he might see something quite different from what the deaf man sees. This might be a positive or a negative viewpoint.
This project is inspired by the concept of duality and the story of the blind men and the elephant
- Darkness--------------------------------------------light
- Yin------------------------------------------------yang
- Matter---------------------------------------------mind
- Evil-----------------------------------------------good
The world of forms Plato’s philosophy of dualism is linked to the religions heaven and hell and directly links the dualism in yoga of yin and yang So the elephant that can be so clearly seen by a sighted person is a complete puzzle to the blind men. They are telling the truth from their point of view, and their fellow blind men examining the exact same thing seem to be completely wrong. We can easily see how this state of affairs could come about when we can see that very solid three dimensional elephant. However when we then consider non-dimensional things like perhaps religion, dualism or non-dualism, scientific or non-scientific, we can more easily imagine, after hearing the blind men and the elephant story, how persons with seemingly opposite points of view, can both be describing the same phenomena from a different view point. the Absolute Reality Aristotle rejected dualism, to view dualism and non-dualism, religious and non-religious, scientific and non-scientific as contradictory you lose sight of the truth; like the blind men arguing about what an elephant looks like. To reach enlightenment and to see absolute truth you must see these philosophies as part of the same truth. These images are edited to show the different ways people see the world. It will particularly explore the different perspectives of two groups: the schizophrenics and the people that agree on what reality is.