Then as I sat there Socrates appeared in a vision out the school of Athens, some twenty-five hundred years ago, walking on the same dusty road I was on next to the wild flowers. As he neared me the sky pealed back, revealing ideas in sight that sat curiously in the air like clouds of perfect rationality; each idea, each concept, with it's own argument, reasoning, and solemnity, each one looking perfect; the unknown beyond seemed to have trillions of such concepts and ideas.
Plato's forms dotted the universe extending far into the unknown and I wondered if they might stretch into infinity.
The obscurity of the unknown was layered in complexity. These concepts were rich and mysterious; they lurked as pure ideas, as pure thoughts with their own order. No matter what person among us looked at them each person formed his own thoughts, then drew their own unique conclusions from the ideas presented. Everything about these mysterious ideas might be known, Socrates speculated, but by whom he asked, then I asked Socrates question again, when thunder crackled over the hills, causing the air to shake, and cattle to run off, while wonder hung in the air.
Ideas mysteriously existed invisibly, outside the human mind, and waited to be encountered by our conscious minds in nature and time, to be discovered, named, and deliberated.
In this way perhaps no idea was wrong, but instead all ideas might really be known by God. What if most ways of looking at life, no matter which belief was formed, or what conclusion a group of people arrived at, is not doomed, perhaps because ideas have a lifespan prior to all human use, having existed intelligently long before man inhabited the mystery of the world.
In this way ideas may have been known long before the world was set in it's course, before the universe, before conscious minds rose out of the sludge, and imperfect man asked questions, began creating myths, thought about reality, investigated the reality of nature, and looked for truth. These ideas sat and waited, in their invisible place, not in the brain, or in culture, but in a metaphysical realm, like Heaven, where ultimate blueprints of ideas exist and their truth is perfect.
Do we dare imagine that most ideas are not evil, not pursued in sin, but designed deliberately to be met by our inquiry. We might wonder if these different approaches toward truth, different beliefs about reality, are not really present in this world because of prior planning, from a higher and more formidable intelligent order, originating from a greater kind of thought, the absolute highest pinnacle of thought, a source of real understanding that knows all things, all truth about ideas, understanding reality perfectly.
It is towards this higher order I look, to God, to whom I know loves all mankind, in every civilization, in every hamlet, and every corner of the world, wherever ideas exist, whatever shape they are in, whatever form they take. I know from listening to God's clear thoughts that he loves the human being everywhere in this world and that it's man that's irrational not God.
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