What is Trans-Sophia?
According to Plato’s famous allegory, we are like a person sitting in a cave, chained to our chairs, facing the wall. We can see only the shadows dancing in front of us, and therefore imagine that this is reality. In other words, we are enclosed in a narrow worldview that comes from limited and distorted interpretations of ourselves and our world. Our plans and hopes and fears and preferences are usually based on a superficial understanding of human reality, and on simplistic and limited assumptions. Nevertheless, we can go out of our small world, if we are only freed from our chains, if we get up and turn around and step out of the cave, and in this way open ourselves to a broader and fuller reality.
This is the basic vision that motivates spiritual philosophy, or Trans-Sophia: the search for broader horizons of understanding and of life. It is based on the realization that I am enclosed in a limited and limiting world, or what can be called my ‘perimeter’, and on the yearning to go out, to transcend my boundaries, and to take part in greater horizons of reality.
The spiritual-philosophical process is composed of two elements: first, a philosophical self-examination of my perimeter. This stage is very much like a process of philosophical practice or philosophical counseling, in which I expose the worldview in which I am imprisoned, and the ways it shapes my perimeter and limits my world. Here the second element begins, that of seeking to go beyond the boundaries of my narrow perimeter, a movement that is essentially spiritual. Here I seek to awaken parts of me that are beyond my perimeter, and discover that I am more than myself, more than the patterns and mechanisms that I call ‘me’. Correspondingly I discover that reality is bigger than the world I know.
The yearning to go beyond our mundane boundaries towards a greater reality is central to many approaches – philosophical, spiritual, religious - in all cultures and at all times. But usually it is mingled with myths and doctrines, theories, alleged knowledge, laws of religious authorities, rituals and scriptures. Trans-Sophia seeks the pure going beyond, without authorities or sacred truths, without a guru, without formulas. It does not look for an alternative perimeter. Because only at the point of openness, only where we stand with empty hands, only there we can go out of our cave, and out of all caves, to a realm of existence that is bigger and more real.
This process is, then, a personal inquiry that is free and open. No pre-given theory, no ideology, no theory or religious schema, no pre-given knowledge should stand in the way of this inquiry. This is an inquiry that accepts no authority, but seeks to question anything that declares itself to be known and obvious. Here the seeker must start from the very beginning. And precisely because the seeker does not try to capture the world with formulas and methods and theories, he or she is free to take part in a greater reality.
