The vast majority of mankind, afflicted with cognitive blindness, never finds rest and delights in trivial pursuits. Look how their gaze is fixed on the shadows that are cast, how they stare in wonder at all the illusions of the truth, and how the fools are deceived by the empty shadows of things […A few] are able to see through the fog of their illusions and try to lead the others, who are benighted by ignorance, into the clear light, but none of them has the urge to seek the light, so feeble is their way of thinking.

Jan Saenredam

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: The Translation of the Meanings of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, Arabic-English. Translated by Muhammad Muhsin Khan, vol. 1, 1985.
   • The commencement of the Divine Inspiration to Allah’s Messenger was in the form of good dreams which came true like bright daylight, and then the love of seclusion was bestowed upon him. He used to go in seclusion in the cave of Hira where he used to worship (Allah alone) continuously for many days before his desire to see his family. He used to take with him the journey food for the stay and then come back to (his wife) Khadija to take his food likewise again till suddenly the Truth descended upon him while he was in the cave of Hira. The angel came to him and asked him to read. The Prophet replied, “I do not know how to read.” The Prophet added, “The angel caught me (forcefully) and pressed me so hard that I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read and I replied, ‘I do not know how to read.’ Thereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second time till I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read but again I replied, ‘I do not know how to read (or what shall I read)?’ Thereupon he caught me for the third time and pressed me, and then released me and said, ‘Read in the name of your Lord, who has created (all that exists), created man from a clot. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous.” (96.1, 96.2, 96.3) Then Allah’s Messenger returned with the Inspiration and with his heart beating severely. Then he went to Khadija bint Khuwailid and said, “Cover me! Cover me!” They covered him till his fear was over and after that he told her everything that had happened and said, “I fear that something may happen to me.” Khadija replied, “Never! By Allah, Allah will never disgrace you. You keep good relations with your kith and kin, help the poor and the destitute, serve your guests generously and assist the deserving calamity-afflicted ones.”
2. Markman, Peter T., and Markman, Roberta H.. Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica. United Kingdom, University of California Press, 1989.
   • Mesoamerican spiritual thought betrays a fascination with “inner” things: the heart of man symbolized the life-force within him and was sacrificially offered to the gods, the “heart” of the earth reached through caves and through the temples that were artificial caves, and the “heart” of the heavens reached by ascending mountains or man-made pyramids. This fundamental inner/outer paradigm, then, placed “god,” or the creative life-force, at the core of the cosmos and saw the natural world as its “mask” (Markman and Markman 3).
3. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Paul Shorey, Harvard University Press, 1963.
   • Picture men dwelling in a sort of subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire width. Conceive them as having their legs and necks fettered from childhood, so that they remain in the same spot,able to look forward only, and prevented by the fetters from turning their heads. Picture further the light from a fire burning higher up and at a distance behind them, and between the fire and the prisoners and above them a road along which a low wall has been built, as the exhibitors of puppet-shows have partitions before the men themselves, above which they show the puppets (Plato 514a-514b).
   • “And if there had been honors and commendations among them which they bestowed on one another and prizes for the man who is quickest to make out the shadows as they pass and best able to remember their customary precedences, sequences and co-existences, and so most successful in guessing at what was to come, do you think he would be very keen about such rewards, and that he would envy and emulate those who were honored by these prisoners and lorded it among them, or that he would feel with Homer and “‘greatly prefer while living on earth to be serf of another, a landless man,’”Hom. Od. 11.489 and endure anything rather than opine with them and live that life?” “Yes,” he said, “I think that he would choose to endure anything rather than such a life (Plato 516e).“
4. Saenredam, Jan. Antrum Platonicum. 1604. Engraving on Paper. National Gallery, London.
5. The Holy Bible, 1611 Edition: King James Version. Hendrickson, 2011.
   • Therefore the LORD God sent him foorth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground, from whence he was taken. So he droue out the man: and he placed at the East of the garden of Eden, Cherubims, and a flaming sword, which turned euery way, to keepe the way of the tree of life (Genesis 3.23-24).
6. VINKEN, P. J. “H. L. Spiegel’s Antrum Platonicum: A Contribution to the Iconology of the Heart.” Oud Holland, vol. 75, 1960, pp. 125–42. 
   • There is still an additional reason why Spiegel dedicated the print to Paaw. In his dissertation on the Hertspiegel, A. C. de Jong pointed to a remarkable dıscrepancy, not only between the description of the cave by Plato and Spiegel’s representation, but also between the engraving and the description ot the Antrum Platonicum in the third book of the Hertspiegel. According to De Jong this discrepancy lies in the fact that, although Spiegel explicitly states on three different occasions that this cave has the shape of a human heart, this contention is in no way corroborated by the print. Knipping also pointed out this discrepancy. He believed that Spiegel certainly would have preferred the Antrum Platonicum to have the shape of a heart, suggested by the passage in the third book of the Hertspiegel quoted above. However, according to Knipping, it is conceivable that because of the inability of the engraver, or, perhaps, owing to Spiegel’s unwillingness (with respect to Plato) to stretch the point too far, the form of the heart was never realized in the engraving “). Actually, the resemblance to the shape of a heart has been overlooked — the cave represented in the engraving has the internal structure of the heart as it was conceived by anatomists in that era (VINKEN 132-133).
7. The Upanishads and Sri Sankara’s Commentary: Isa, Kena & Mundaka. Translated by S. Sitarama Sastri, Sir Ganganatha Jha. Natesen, 1898.
   • The entrance of the True is covered as if by a golden vessel. Remove O sun the covering- that I who have been worshipping “The True” may behold it. O Sun, sole traveller of the Heavens, controller of all, Surya, son of Prajapati remove thy rays and gather up thy burning light. I behold thy glorious form; I am he, the Purusha within thee (ISAVASYOPANISHAD 15-16).