In "The Allegory of the Cave", prisoners in a cave are forced to look at shadows while the people behind them are forced to accept these shadows as reality - "For them... the truth would be nothing more than the shadows of images. A prisoner, however, is released and finds himself in the real world, which contains more depth and complexity than he has ever known. At first, the prisoner will be grieved in the bright light and penetrating, but will eventually recover. According to Plato, the freed prisoner is then forced to return to the shadows of the cave, to inform the remaining chained prisoners of the real world, however, they will not make the freed prisoner believe it, and he can even go like Afra s to kill him for such "lies" contrary to their "reality". The search for truth is, therefore, a strenuous but rewarding process a visual world, meaningless if left alone. Only those who can penetrate the sunlight from the cave will ascend to the intellectual world. Prisoners in the shadows know only the boring physical world, while those who ascend into the sunlight know the spiritual world and are exposed to the first hints of truth. The soul ascends upward into the realm of goodness and truth, where "...souls ever hasten to the upper world where they desire to dwell...". The pursuit of goodness and truth, therefore, improves the soul, as the soul desires to be elevated to a higher state of knowledge and morality. Caring for oneself and one's soul involves freeing oneself from the shackles of the physical world and ascending to the "...world of knowledge...the universal author of all things beautiful and right...and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual..." The soul desires to dwell in a world of morality and knowledge, and only the pursuit of