（CEBSHL Talent Measurement） P

（CEB|SHL Talent Measurement） Plato and Siddhartha Gautama both discuss the existence of a higher plane of human consciousness in their philosophical arguments. The two ancient thinkers were similar in their thinking about reality and the human condition; they both express the need to escape this condition and enter "enlightenment" or "true reality. " The most striking similarity between the two philosophers is that they both assume that this "reality" is independent of most of humanity. This assumption cannot be proven. Both men renounce sensory perception in favour of a more enlightened form of acquiring knowledge, but how could they identify these forms without their senses? Both philosophers use their sensory perception to reason and hence develop philosophy that identifies sensory perception as deceptive and encourages abandoning reliance on the senses. What a paradox! This contradictory state of affairs fosters vast confusion and denies the channel through which humans acquire knowledge--sensory perception. Questions of "if" and "how" humans know anything about reality necessarily lead to questions about acceptable human behaviour. Philosophers have been concerned with ethics throughout history, so it is no wonder that Plato and Gautama both focused on this vexing issue. Both Plato and Gautama scorn materialistic ethics and extol ethics based on disengagement from the world and denial of sensory perception. But how, reason demands, did the two men arrive at their theories? There is a built-in weakness in both of their theories because behaviour is monitored by the senses and right and wrong are discerned after perceiving circumstance. In following Plato's and Gautama's ethical guidelines, man loses the ability to judge behaviour. Man must rely on his senses and reason to predict possible immediate and long-term outcomes of events in order to determine ethical guidelines, and Plato and Gautama both denied that truth. What is the main point of the passage above?