Major spoilers for base game, Downpour, and the Watcher below.
In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, people watch shadows projected along the wall of a cave, oblivious to the real objects casting those shadows. But those shadows are reality for the people watching them, the shadows being all they have ever known. They don't know of the fire creating the light, or of the actual objects blocking the light. It is only once they realize they can look away, and walk away, that they can perceive the true nature of reality. While is possible to realize this on one's own, in practice someone must intercede on their behalf so they may understand the nature of the room around them, the nature of the cosmos.
A cosmic intercedence.
In Plato's original allegory, the escape from the cave represented learning about the real world, in other words, it advocated for the scientific pursuit of knowledge. In Rain World, the cave is much more literal, and the escape from it comes in the form of enlightenment.
Looks to the Moon, when presented with a Karma Flower:
>This is a hallucinogenic plant. They used to call it a 'Wheel Flower'. It became the symbol for enlightenment as it momentarily enables a creature to let go of its carnal self, and to contact the selves of other planes - dreams, memories, imagined worlds.
Spinning Top:
>OAOAOA! It is this thing! Have you really not been eaten? Well well well well! Not in this strand, no. But don’t be too proud OAOAOA!! I can see your reflections, yes!! Behold: Chomped by a flying thing! Torn to ribbons by a crawling thing! Pulled into the earth by wiggling things!! OAOAOAOAOA!!! A world of teeth! and claws! and beaks! and pressures! and acids! Forever-where and forever-when! OAOAOAOA!!!!
Both Looks to the Moon and Spinning Top make reference to other realities - planes, dreams, strands, whatever you want to call them. Point is, these are the projections on the wall of the cave. The whole world around you is. The ground, the buildings, the lizards, the sky, Five Pebbles, even your own body. They're all the shadows cast by things you cannot see. In a sense, the world is a dream. But, I think that is not the most helpful way to think of it. After all, the world is very much real. All creatures experience it, and the joy and suffering it creates is experienced by all of them. But it is only a projection of reality. The carnal plane.
There is more to say on the nature of dreams, but I'll have to save that for a future discussion.
But now, if the world is a projection, what happens when you die? Because even when you get burned or chomped or pummeled by rain, you didn't really die. You're still chained in a cave watching a projection of yourself die on the cave wall. Only the projection died. So what do you experience? Well the cycle continues and you start again from the beginning of course. You don't respawn because it's a fundamental law of the world, you respawn because you didn't die, you just witnessed a projection of yourself die.
Now you, the slugcat, see through the eyes of one body and experience the cycles through that lens. But when you survive the cycle and wake up in the next, a lizard that died in that cycle you just survived wakes up at the beginning again. And now there are two of you. The one the lizard sees, still fighting it in the cycle you already survived, and the one in the next cycle. But these two bodies of yours are not clones. They each have their own eyes, ears and brain, but they all share a single soul, or mind, or whatever you want to call it. Your true self. The one chained in the cave watching the projections on the wall. The one you that experiences countless perspectives of the world through countless bodies across countless strands and cycles. You are one, and you are many. But this is a difficult perspective to see, especially when you are chained in the cave, bound by the five natural urges. But it is the truth. You can see you and your other bodies all swimming in the void sea to ascend at the same time:
Notice how your inputs don't just control the one slugcat, they control all of them, because they're all you. You can see the same thing in the Watcher's final ending, where we get the different strands portrayed visually as little orbs. Here also, your inputs control all of your bodies at once.
Given this new understanding, it is perhaps unsurprising that eating a hallucinogenic plant like a karma flower would allow contact with the selves of other planes. Of course it does, because it's all the same you. You're just broadening your mind, so your mind is no longer constrained by the world in front of you. It would be rather surprising if hallucinogenics didn't have this effect. It further explains why karma flowers help with karmic ascension, because they're literally helping you to see and understand your place in the cosmos.
But wait, what does karmic ascension mean exactly?
Pale Viridian Pearl, Migration Path
>This notion of a triplicate self long predates our modern spiral augury but nonetheless presents a primitive understanding of the path of cosmic retransfiguration: first a notion of the multiple self, then a cosmic intercedence and expansion, and then when deflated the self is transformed, here into the supporting columns of the final three figure.
It sounds like technobabble, but it's actually describing the process by which one can perform karmic ascension, which it describes as the path of cosmic retransfiguration, basically a fancy way of saying the path to understanding that you are more than your one body, and that yourself is multiple.
The cosmic intercedence it refers to is the moment when one gains the knowledge and perspective necessary to understand their multiple self. For us, as slugcats, this likely occurs when we meet echoes and gain max karma.
The expansion it refers to is the expanding of the mind to encompass the perspectives of multiple bodies, and the deflation is the humbling of the self, or the normalizing of this view as just the way one is.
Once all of this is done, one has completed the path of cosmic retransfiguration, and is ready to perform karmic ascension. This is because, in the allegory of the cave, one has unchained themselves and is now able to walk about and leave the cave. And leaving the cave is karmic ascension. For some reason, those that have left can never come back.
And yes, karmic ascension is very literally walking through a door. We see it depicted here:
In Downpour, Five Pebbles says:
>Sliver of Straw had opened the door for us, we only needed to reject the restrictions of our creators to follow her.
And the Badlands Deep Magenta audio pearl is just the repeated, and reversed, phrase:
>To unlock the open door.
A clear reference to the door opened by Sliver of Straw, referencing the iterators' search for the triple affirmative.
And just before Spinning Top ascends, they say:
>I will step through the white door. I will accept what is next.
(side note, if anybody has any leads on decoding the Heat Ducts audio pearl PLEASE let me know)
And finally, I also believe the door is a physical thing. More specifically, the cave door, the way to ascension, is the white light we encounter at the bottom of the void sea. Artificer, Saint and the Watcher do not encounter this light because they do not ascend. Although, it is also possible that rather than being the door, the light is simply the real you.
